


Orange

by keepfabandgayon



Series: Rainbow Fruit Smoothie [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Artists, Asexual Character, Friendship, Kissing, Love, Multi, Neurodiversity, Nonbinary Character, Not Abandoned, Other, Polyamory, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sad Backstory, Smut for the Soul, Teacher-Student Relationship, Trans Character, Triad relationship, just writing slowly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2018-01-24 23:14:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 58
Words: 325,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1620434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keepfabandgayon/pseuds/keepfabandgayon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren's best friend has a secret, his sister made him promise to try out for a musical, and a visiting professor is too attractive for words. Corsets are involved. Flesh-eating giants, not so much. Students and professors alike learn what it means to love and to be honest, and the many ways in which they can do so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Illustrate THIS

Three pads of 18"x24" sketch paper flapped in the wind. Eren tried to burrow down further into his sweatshirt to block out the cold -- a futile attempt, really. Reaching the intersection by his dorm, he tried to shift the armfuls of drawing materials around (no such luck) and then aimed a kick at the "press to walk" button. 

And he'd just have to do this in reverse the next day on his way to class. _Fun._

The campus was beautiful, but it was January and it was Massachusetts and it was _cold_ and Eren was too stubborn to admit that his beloved oversized Wall College sweatshirts were not warm enough outerwear for sub-zero temperatures. Snow coats were for _snow_ , he argued, and if there were no fluffy white flakes dropping from the sky, he wasn't bundling up. 

A gust of wind caught the pads of paper face-on and pushed him sideways, and the bitter cold was like a slap in the face. 

Maybe a warm jacket was in order. 

He'd also forgotten his gloves, and the cold made his hands prickle and turn red while he bounced slightly, waiting for the light to change. The Blue Fine Arts Centre was only a block and a half away from Shiga and Shina Houses, but the walk signal at the intersection was always slow to respond. 

Eren's hands were almost numb by the time he got into Shiga. He repeated his kicking on the automatic door button in front of his dorm, and on the door to his room. "Armin! Open up, I don't have any free hands!"

His roommate opened the door, looking irritated. "I'm trying to study."

"It's the second day of classes!" Eren squeezed through the door, pushing past Armin, and nearly got one of his bags caught on the doorknob. 

"Yeah, and I have readings for every class."

"That's what happens when you take three history classes."

"It's my major! You're taking four art classes." Armin dropped back into his desk chair and stuck in his earbuds, ending the conversation. Eren could hear the indie hip-hop from his bed across the room. Their shared bedroom smelled like new textbooks, and by the hundreds of pink sticky notes poking out from the pages of each of the three brand-new hardcover tomes on Armin’s bed, Eren deduced his best friend had already marked every reading for the entire semester. 

Eren, being a very devoted art major, did not have a semester’s worth of assignments handed to him in a list on the first day of class. What he did have was a few short syllabi, a page detailing his first assignment for each class, and lists requiring that he buy nearly two hundred dollars worth of art supplies and three digital painting programs. 

At least, Eren thought, most second-semester art classes didn't expect him to do bullshit "let's see how you draw before we begin!" assignments -- they went right into the learning process. He looked over the syllabi he'd been handed over the last few days. Drawing II, Illustration I, Anatomy for the Artist, and Intro to Digital Art; not an unusual load for an art major focussing on illustration. He chuckled a little at the reminder that Anatomy for the Artist had a figure drawing studio session that met once a week -- as if he wouldn't have loads of other time spent drawing naked people. 

His only homework due the next day was a written page detailing his expectations of Anatomy, which he typed up in less than an hour, before tackling the Illustration assignment due Monday. 

_Illustrate a scene from your favourite book._ Easy enough. 

_First, do four prep sketches in charcoal. You may use different scenes for the sketches, but at least two of them must be of the scene you use in your final piece._ Nothing out of the ordinary. 

_The final illustration should be done in full colour._ “Motherfucker. It’s the first assignment!” 

\---

Eren's first thought upon entering his Anatomy for the Artist lecture had been, "that is one ugly-ass professor." Keith Shadis's sunken eyes and pathetic, lopsided goatee made him look rather like he hadn't slept in years and didn't own a mirror. His too-shiny bald head reflected the overhead lights and sometimes made him look like a lightbulb with legs. Eren was pretty sure he polished his bare scalp. He was loud, and obnoxious, and nearly head-butted two students in that first hour alone. 

He was a completely different person in the studio. While he was still rather condescending, and his head was still blindingly shiny, he gave good advice and didn't yell nearly as much. Eren might have respected him under different circumstances. 

As it was, Shadis's insistence on pointing out every missed detail in Eren's work was infuriating. He kept at it for the first two hours, until Eren’s short temper got the best of him. 

"What the hell is that? Are you trying to draw upside-down?" 

Eren sighed. "No, sir." He kept his head down, focussing on his drawing, and the professor moved on. 

On his next circuit around the room, though, Shadis had much more insight to offer regarding Eren’s admittedly sparse drawing. "All you’ve drawn is the head."

"I'm not done yet."

"The eyes are uneven."

"I'm not done yet."

"You need to add the--"

" _I'm not done yet!_ "

He didn't realise he'd yelled until after every pencil in the room stopped scratching. Mikasa grabbed her kneaded eraser and started pulling at it, a dark look forming in her eyes. Armin -- who was taking the class as part of his liberal arts requirements, despite his self-proclaimed inability to draw anything more complicated than stick figures -- looked like he feared for Eren's life. 

"Hmph. Continue." Shadis moved on to Eren’s left. "What are all these smudges-- _are you eating in my class?_ "

The class proceeded, and the professor’s voice carried across the room as he commented on each student’s work. His comments, along with the scratching of pencils and squeaking of rickety drawing horses under the pressure of frequent erasing, were about the only noises in the room -- save for Sasha, whose gallon-sized snack bag full of hash browns had been temporarily confiscated. She sniffled every few minutes, apparently holding back tears, mourning the loss of her breakfast. Eren felt a little bad for her, and kept looking to his left to make sure she hadn’t completely broken down yet; he only knew her vaguely from a class they’d shared the previous semester, and from that he knew exactly how seriously she took her food. 

"I told you earlier in the semester that we have visiting artists come and teach at Wall," Professor Shadis shouted over the sound of students packing up before the period was quite done. "For the next few semesters, the internationally-renowned Levi will be teaching two higher-level courses. He's also agreed to visit some of our studio sessions. Don't be late to studio next week; he'll be there, and he doesn't tolerate tardiness." He punctuated that with a glare at Eren, who rolled his eyes. 

"I don't know what he's talking about. I'm always on time." Eren led his friends out the door. 

Mikasa pulled at his ear. "Don’t lie, I’ve seen your habits before and they haven’t improved. You skid through the door at the last possible second and usually knock something over while you're unpacking. I don't think that counts."

"Well _maybe_ if my roommate didn't insist on getting to class half an hour early, I would actually have someone to remind me to leave at the right time."

Armin shoved him. "Hey, don't blame me. I leave that early to get breakfast." 

“Breakfast is for the weak.” Eren tried not to laugh as Sasha shot him a horrified look around mouthfuls of potato. “Besides, I have better things to do. Like sleep, for one.”

They exited the building, and Sasha and Connie broke off from the group to head to their next class. They promised to bring some of the leftovers from Pie Making (the official title of which was History of Culinary Traditions: Pies for Every Meal and Occasion) to dinner. Jean ran off ahead to the dorm, shouting something about a lunch date. 

Reiner, who was in the same Anatomy lecture but a different studio period, caught up with the remainder of Eren’s group. “How was it? Shadis still busting your balls?” Reiner had taken a class with him previously; Shadis had a reputation for being, to put it lightly, rather harsh with his students. His methods were effective, though, so they couldn’t exactly say he was a bad teacher. 

Eren groaned. “He’s horrible. Do you think enough people would join a spitballing contest? One point if you hit him, ten points if you hit him on the head, a hundred if you do it while he’s facing you.”

“I’m pretty sure harassing a professor can get you expelled,” Armin said.

“Come on, Armin, live a little.”

“Yeah,” Reiner agreed. “Hey, Armin, you want me to hold your bag? It looks heavy.”

“Um. No thanks, I can handle it.” Looking distinctly uncomfortable, Armin walked faster. He reached the crosswalk first, taking half a glance at the flashing red hand on the walk signal, and dashed across the street before the stoplight turned green. 

Eren didn’t catch up with Armin until he got back to their room. His friend was unpacking his backpack, and he turned to the door when Eren walked in. The textbook in his hand slipped from his fingers and landed corner-down on his toes. 

“Mother _fucker_!” Armin swore, picking up his bare foot to inspect the damage. He sat down on his bed, moving his second and third toes around. “I don’t think they’re broken…”

“You okay?” Eren asked. 

“Yeah,” Armin said, curling his toes. They were starting to swell. “You surprised me.”

“I wasn’t that far behind you. Anyway, what was that all about? You ran off.”

“I did.” Armin picked up the fallen textbook and placed it gently on his bed. 

“Why? I don’t know if you noticed, but Reiner was--”

“I noticed. I’m not gay, Eren.”

Eren was silent for half a minute, trying to choose his words wisely. “There’s no reason to be ashamed of it. I know our high school kind of sucked, but they were assholes and they were wrong.”

“They _were_ wrong. I’m not gay.”

“You stare at guys all the time, Armin.”

“I’m not!” 

“Fine!” Eren threw his hands up. “Fine. You’re not gay.” He ran a hand through his hair, breathing out slowly to tone down his sudden flare of anger. “I just want you to be honest with me.”

“I know,” Armin said, in a small voice. He stared down at his hands. “I’m trying to be. Just…” 

“I get it. I’ll drop it. Just don’t forget I’m always here for you, okay?”

“I won’t forget.”

Eren nodded. He moved farther into the room and tossed his bag onto his bed, the top bunk, and took a seat at his desk to work on his next assignment. 

“Hey Eren?”

“Hm?” 

“Do you think I should cut my hair?”

The question surprised him, but Eren tried not to show it. “I don’t know. I’m kind of used to you looking like this, so I can’t really say. Might make you look older. That could be a good thing.”

“I don’t mean, like, _short_. I meant… maybe bringing the fringe back?”

Eren turned to look at his friend. When they were kids, Armin had a fringe that ended at his eyebrows, and his parents would trim it for him every few weeks to keep his sight clear. After they died, he’d grown out the fringe, not letting his grandfather anywhere near his hair. Now it was cleanly parted in the middle, and still chin-length as it had always been. He’d been mistaken for a girl more than once. Eren tried to imagine him with the old haircut. “Forget what I said about you looking older.”

“I think it might be a nice change.”

“Well, if you want to do it, I can’t exactly stop you.”

Armin rolled his eyes. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” He looked at himself in the mirror, fiddling with his hair. _Soon_ , he thought.


	2. Abs Like Windows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m pretty sure I can’t legally serve you that much espresso."

“Morning, Sleeping Ugly.” Jean greeted Eren with a smile on his face. 

Eren growled in response, rubbing at the dark bruises under his eyes. Nine in the morning was not a normal time for a college student to be awake on a Saturday, but he needed to work and it was one of the only museum shifts open when he’d signed up. He’d forgotten the night before, though, and hadn’t actually gone to bed until around five in the morning. 

Jean leaned forward on the counter, looking smug. “What would the mountain troll like to order?” 

“Whatever the hell it is that gets your ass so chipper in the morning.”

Jean made a face. “I’m pretty sure I can’t legally serve you that much espresso. It’s probably a health hazard. Not that I care about your health; I don’t really want to get fired. But I can give you something close.” He started to move away from the counter, but then turned back for a moment. “Just... don’t drink it all at once.”

“No promises.”

Jean called out something to Sasha. Eren didn’t even listen to him, still too dazed to really take in any information. The smell of hot coffee waved in front of his face caught his attention, though, and he handed over his campus card to pay. 

While Jean was ringing him up, Eren downed half of the drink, barely feeling the boiling liquid slide down his throat. 

“Christ, Jager.” Jean handed him his card and receipt, then cringed. “You’re gonna feel that later.”

“I hope I feel it within the next five minutes, otherwise any early birds at the museum are gonna get checked in by a zombie.”

There were no early birds that day, and Eren played 2048 on the check-in desk computer for three hours after finding out that none of the programs he needed for Digital Art were installed. The coffee was gone within ten minutes of the start of his shift, and he debated calling someone to bring him more, but Armin was probably plugged into his headphones doing homework and Mikasa was almost certainly still asleep. Eren knew better than to wake the dragon on a weekend. 

The rest of his Saturday was free, though, and as soon as the next desk worker came in Eren was on his way out the door. He lamented the fact that he’d be spending most of his free Saturday afternoons doing homework, but such was college. 

The dining hall on the first floor of Eren’s house was part way through serving lunch, and Eren grabbed a couple breakfast burritos as he passed through -- one for himself, and the other for Armin, who probably forgot to get food as he often did on weekends. Mikasa shuffled in as Eren left the dining hall; her hair was all over the place and she still wore her pyjamas. Her fuzzy slippers, shaped like tigers with open, lopsided mouths and pointy felt teeth, glared unevenly up at Eren. Her post-sleep scowl remained etched deeply on her face, but she spared a small nod and a slight softening of her eyes for Eren; he smiled and squeezed her shoulder as he passed. 

When Eren got into his room, he was greeted with the sight of Armin tying his hair into pigtails. 

Eren blinked a few times. “Um. What?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer. 

Armin rolled his eyes. “I’m cutting my hair.” He snapped the rubber band into place, then took up a comb, running it through the thin curtain of damp hair in front of his face. 

“Wow. You’re really gonna do it aren’t you?” 

Armin turned slightly, glaring at Eren as if to challenge him to say anything against it. Eren held his hands up in surrender. 

“Do what you want. I just didn’t think you were being serious about it.”

“I was. I am.”

Armin ran the comb through the front of his hair a few times, trying to get all that wasn’t in either of the two tight pigtails at his nape between the teeth at once. He managed it, then let the comb sit right above his eyebrows. He brought the scissor up and positioned it around the curtain of hair. 

He closed his eyes at the same time as he closed the scissors. They made a sharp noise, and Armin opened his eyes to find not a wall of blond hair, but the mirror, and his reflection. 

The scissor had made a clean, straight cut through his hair. He looked down; yellow strands littered the floor at his feet. He looked back up, dropping the comb, and ran his fingers through the short strands. 

_Okay. Not bad. I could get away with this._

Armin tugged the rubber bands out of the rest of his hair and let it fall over his ears as it normally did. Normally… except now, he had a fringe. 

He shook his head, trying not to giggle at the feeling of soft hair tickling against his forehead. 

“You look like a girl, you know,” Eren commented. He then shoved three cookies in his mouth, cramming them in as much as possible. He managed to let only a minimum of crumbs fall on his shirt. 

Armin shrugged. “I always did.” He knelt on the floor and picked up all the fallen hair, tossing it in the garbage. 

“It looks good, though. Suits you.”

Armin turned his head to stare incredulously at his friend. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Eren grinned. “You’d make a very pretty girl.”

Armin wasn’t really sure how to respond to that. His first instinct was to laugh, like it was a joke, but he could also take it seriously -- _Wow, would I? Maybe I’ll go borrow a dress from Mikasa…_ \-- or he could get angry, like Eren was making fun of him. Eren was still grinning, though, like he was waiting for a response, and his smile started to fall as Armin stared at him, eyes wide and unblinking. 

Armin ended up just shrugging, unable to decide, and he looked back down at the floor, searching for any stray hairs. 

“Armin?”

“I guess so,” he blurted out. He didn’t look back up to see Eren’s reaction. 

“Hey, what’s wrong--” Eren started to ask, but Armin cut him off. 

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine. I have homework to do.”

“Okay. Um. I brought you a burrito?” Eren held up the food, and Armin snatched it from him, avoiding his eyes as he went back to his bed. 

Armin picked up the nearest textbook and turned to the assigned reading, which he’d already done, and stared at it, not really reading the words. 

_You’d make a very pretty girl._

And didn’t he fucking know it. 

\---

Over the years, Mikasa had developed some sort of extra sense. She always knew how Eren and Armin were feeling, and she couldn’t ever explain _how_ she knew. She just knew. 

Like, for instance, as she stared into her second mug of shitty dining hall coffee, a plate of fried eggs and bacon half-eaten in front of her, she knew Armin was hurt. Considering Eren had just passed her on his way upstairs a few minutes prior, Mikasa deduced that it was probably his fault, and that he was already trying to find a way to fix what he’d done, so she didn’t feel the need to intervene. Not yet, at least. She’d probably check on them when she went back upstairs, though. 

“Hey, Mikasa, are you going to finish your food?”

Mikasa only moved her eyes to glance at Sasha, who was reaching for her bacon. “Don’t touch it,” she said, nearly growling. 

Sasha snatched her hand back. “Sorry.” She went back to her conversation with Connie. Mikasa didn’t pay much attention to what they were talking about, but she shook her hair forward over her eyes and watched them through it. 

She’d given up trying to pretend she wasn’t jealous of them. To be so comfortable with another person, to be able to spend nearly every waking moment with them and never get bored, that was something Mikasa craved. She almost had it with Eren and Armin, but not quite; she was protective of them, more than anything else, and despite how much the three of them cared about each other, most of their time all together was spent in silence. Eren and Armin had plenty to say, but Mikasa was a person of few words; strong words, but few. Sometimes she wanted to be able to really talk to someone. People liked her well enough, though they were often intimidated by her and she never got close enough to anyone but Eren and Armin to call them friends. 

Sasha was trying, though. It took Mikasa a long time to realise it, but Sasha was really trying to get her to open up -- to become her friend. And she responded to it with biting comments and a tone that she usually reserved for those who picked on Eren and Armin. 

She drained her coffee, but still felt cold. 

“Sasha.” Mikasa stood up, her hair still covering her eyes. “I’m getting more coffee. Do you want anything?”

The girl in question stared at Mikasa with wide eyes. “Um. Sure. Could you get me some more bacon?”

Mikasa nodded once and left the table. It was a start, right? 

\---

Armin giving Eren the cold shoulder for a few hours was nothing out of the ordinary. A day or two, even, was normal. They fought, like most good friends did, and they were both horrible with apologies. Eren would mope and angst about it, complete with stomping around everywhere and slamming doors and sighing like every breath was his last. Armin would just get very, very quiet, sometimes for a few days. 

Three days, though, was pushing it, especially when Armin was completely silent during the time he spent with Eren and Mikasa doing Anatomy homework in the studio. 

And it wasn’t the usual slow simmer of suppressed anger and voluntary silence. Armin didn’t stare at Eren as if expecting him to say something, didn’t sigh every few minutes or start stealing Eren’s things to get his attention. He kept himself to one- or two-word responses, but he did respond, and his most used phrase was “I’m fine,” said more times than Eren could count every time Eren asked him what was wrong, and how he could fix it. Eren tried to apologise when he thought of what it might have been that set Armin off, but was shut down every time. 

Stranger still, Armin barely talked to anyone else, either. Not that he was usually a person of so many words, but he always had something to contribute to a conversation. 

Instead, he kept to himself. Even at meals, while his friends went to greater and greater lengths to get him to react, he was silent, and he stared listlessly at his meals and ate without tasting his food. Jean came up with outrageous but unfounded threats against Eren’s life and physical well-being, and made vaguely sexual references about his new boyfriend, who none of them had yet met. Mikasa pulled out all the stops on her deadpan jokes. Sasha and Connie at one point resorted to sticking silverware up their noses, much to the dismay of the dining hall workers. Nothing even so much as made Armin smile. 

Suddenly, on Thursday, after four and a half days of near-silence, Armin inexplicably was back to his normal self. 

Eren tried asking once again what had bothered Armin the last few days. 

“Nothing,” Armin responded. “I mean, it was something, but it’s not a big deal. I overreacted. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise; you were obviously hurt. I didn’t really know what to do.” Eren gestured at their friends seated around the table, and they all smiled back. “We were worried about you.”

“There wasn’t any reason to.”

“You barely spoke to us for four days,” Mikasa said. “If one of us did that, you’d be worried too.”

“Yeah,” Armin agreed. “But I’m fine now. I don’t want to make it into a big deal. I just had a few bad days, you know?”

They moved to a different conversation after that, following Armin’s wishes on the surface. Eren watched Armin, though, looking for any sign he was still hurting. 

He didn’t notice anything. Armin was talking and laughing and joking with everyone and interjecting into conversations with a relevant one of the billions of statistics and historical facts stored away in his brain. He seemed fine, but Eren was still worried. 

When Armin left, bemoaning an as-yet-unwritten paper, he kissed Eren on the cheek before standing. Eren froze. It wasn’t as if Armin had never done it before. They did that all the time as kids; holding hands, friendly kisses, whatever form of comfort was needed between the three of them was always freely given. But that was when they were kids, and Armin hadn’t done it in years. 

By the time Eren’s brain repaired itself from the short-circuiting it had experienced, Armin was already gone, and Mikasa was staring at him. She seemed to be the only one who had noticed the kiss. She didn’t say anything, just blinked at him and turned back to the boisterous conversation happening at their table, and for that Eren was thankful. 

\---

When Eren walked into his Anatomy studio (five minutes early, and _without_ knocking anything over, thanks very much), he immediately was drawn to the unfamiliar man standing in a corner. He frowned, almost scowled, and that was the most defining thing about him; it didn't seem to be directed at anything, and it made him look even more like a teenager than his short stature and small, angular features did. This couldn't be Levi, Eren thought; despite his otherwise youthful appearance, he had the jaded expression and dark under-eye circles of someone who’d spent years barely getting by on selling artwork, and Levi was supposed to be incredibly well-known for his work. Then again a similar dead-eyed look was on the face of nearly every one of the juniors who hadn’t gone abroad. This guy was probably just their model for the day, though he didn't look much like any of the models Eren had drawn before. 

As soon as the clock showed the first second of class, the man spoke up. "Good fucking afternoon."

Eren liked him already. 

"I'm Levi.” Well, that cleared that up. “Keith asked me to tell you brats about myself, and teach you something. I graduated from here a while ago, and now I do hyper-realistic close-up paintings of people's body parts. I've painted more dicks than most of you will ever see in your life.”

Before he even registered what he was doing, Eren found himself applauding Levi's little speech. That earned Eren a glare, before Levi turned around and started to strip. 

“And because I believe in learning through experience,” Levi continued, “you're gonna draw mine."

Usually the models were slender dance majors with the utmost confidence in their naked bodies, or bored just-turned-18s looking for a way to get a little extra money without really doing anything, or they were professors who had particularly enthusiastic support for the arts. Levi was none of those. Years of art hadn’t taken the same toll on him that it had on the rest of the professors in the department; he was short, but still one of the most physically fit people Eren had ever seen in person, and that was saying quite a lot, as he’d once tried out for the swim team. While drawing freshmen and elderly English teachers was good practice for getting down the basics of people of "average build," there was only one way to get beyond drawing abs like windows. 

That way, of course, was to stare at Levi without putting pencil to paper for five minutes, then realise Shadis was two students away and hurriedly try to scribble some shapes that resembled preparation for drawing a body before Eren (or his very slight boner) got noticed. 

Eren gasped and choked on air when he finally realised his turn for scrutiny was coming up, and his face bloomed red as Levi’s eyes flicked over to him, then down at his blank paper. From on top of the raised platform on which Levi stood, even that short of a man could clearly see Eren hadn’t drawn a thing. 

He also could probably see how red Eren was. 

Whoops. 

With maybe a minute before Shadis’s imminent interruption, Eren frantically blocked out Levi’s pose. He stood with his back to Eren, legs apart, and looked over his right shoulder. Right arm bent, right hand on the back of his hip, and Eren’s eyes were drawn once again to that ass sculpted by the gods themselves, which had held his attention quite thoroughly as soon as the abs he’d hoped to focus on were removed from his sight. Then again, maybe this pose was a godsend; had Levi been facing him, Eren would have had a one-man audience as he became progressively more entranced by the cock he’d only gotten a glimpse of. 

Fuck. Levi was still looking at him. 

Eren’s face was burning, and he wondered how long he had before he passed out, what with all the blood in his body rushing back and forth between his dick and his face. 

Figure drawing wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be awkward, and not the kind of awkward where you get a hard-on and try to draw without moving it too much. Rather, it was supposed to be the kind of awkward where you skirted around putting too much detail into things like nipples and genitals for the first few weeks of class because you didn’t want to stare at them too long and seem creepy. You were supposed to ignore your opinions on the physical attractiveness of the person whose naked body you were trying to commit to paper. You weren’t supposed to have crises over your sexual orientation because of your physical response to the model (though, in all honesty, Eren probably should have seen that one coming ever since Jean started making very much unwanted appearances in his sex dreams). 

Figure drawing definitely wasn’t supposed to include you sweating under your boat-neck shirt as your professor wondered aloud why you only had such a rough sketch down after nearly ten minutes. 

\---

"Hey!" Eren ran to catch up with Levi, who'd dressed in seconds and made his way out the door immediately as class ended. "What was your name again?" 

"Levi."

He hadn't forgotten, of course, but-- "Got a last name, Levi?"

"Just Levi." Levi sped up and turned up the collar of his coat. 

"Okay, 'just Levi'. So, what got you into art?"

Stopping, Levi looked back at Eren. "Why are you talking to me?"

"Come on, man, I just saw your junk. Is the idea of talking to me that bad?"

Levi looked at Eren like he was imagining Eren's slow and painful death -- but then, that wasn't too different from how he looked at anyone else. Eren was hopeful. "Think of this as a one night stand, except I'm not going to fuck you." 

“I wasn’t expecting you to.”

Levi tilted his head slightly and gave Eren a dead-eyed look that very clearly said _are you shitting me?_ “Your staring said otherwise. Move on, kid. This isn’t the last time you’ll be drawing me, and it’ll make things less awkward for both of us if you don’t shit yourself every time I take my pants off.”

“I didn’t shit myself!” Eren immediately regretted raising his voice; several passing students stared at him. 

“Maybe not, but you did nearly jizz in your pants, and those are both messes I don’t want to be responsible for. Piss off.”

Eren watched him go, then kicked the curb and grumbled, crossing his arms. So what if that made him look like a twelve-year-old having a temper tantrum? He’d just wanted to _talk_. 

...Right?


	3. A Good Nipple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little slice of Levi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> contains descriptive nudity, and mentions of sex work.

Levi's apartment wasn't far from campus. He'd once shared it with the few people who'd tolerated him enough in college to continue living with him, but Hanji and Erwin moved out a few years earlier. Hanji needed more space, and Erwin needed an address his clients could find him at where the door would not be answered by a sleepy and aggravated young adult wearing boxers and only boxers. Since then, Levi found himself alone more often than not. 

It suited him, though. More than anything Levi liked not having to clean up after Hanji’s messes. 

They both still visited him. He'd never actually taken keys from either of them when they moved out, so he wasn't surprised to find Hanji waiting for him when he got home. The cardboard box on his kitchen table, though, was a surprise. 

"Hey there, Lance Corporal."

That _fucking nickname_. "Do you have to remind me every time you come here?"

"Oh, come on, you pulled it off well." Hanji stood, nearly knocking over the chair, and opened the large cardboard box. "You never would have left that 'mediocre starving artist' stage otherwise."

"If you mean that being a whore for two years inspired me to paint every penis I could get a hold of, you're absolutely right."

"Pun intended?" 

"Of course. What have you brought me now? Don't tell me you're wasting your time designing bondage shit again." In Hanji's hands were several long strips of leather. Levi looked into the box; a few squares of stiff grey and brown fabric, along with what appeared to be two oddly-shaped gun holsters, remained at the bottom. 

Hanji laughed and snapped the leather against the nearest chair. "That's exactly what I'm doing, in between trying to find a cure for brain cancer and going for my weekly visits to Dr. Smith." Erwin had come to Wall College at age 22, during Levi and Hanji’s first year, after losing an arm fighting for his country, and had absolutely no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He decided to become a psychiatrist for the sake of his friends. Levi suspected if there was any chance he could go back to the army, Erwin wouldn't hesitate for a moment. As it was, he was responsible for giving certain drugs to Hanji and keeping certain other drugs very far away from Levi.

Hanji dangled the straps in front of of Levi; finally they seemed less like a tangled mass of leather and more like some sort of full-body climbing harness, though still incomplete as a few of the straps hung loose. "Do you like it?"

"What is it?"

Hanji took that as an okay to start wrapping the straps around him. There were more buckles than Levi thought necessary, but when he took a look in his bedroom mirror, he found that the look suited him rather well. He didn't quite understand the purpose of the squares of stiff fabric at his lower back or the holsters under his arms, but then Hanji's ideas usually went far beyond the finished products, and he wasn't really interested in the hours-long lecture about the inspiration for this get-up and its many practical uses. 

"I think it's missing something," Hanji said, stepping back and circling around Levi, inspecting him from all angles. "Well, of course it's missing all the manoeuvre equipment, but I'll need help with that. But I think it needs something else... Put your boots back on." 

"Hanji, I have someone coming over in an hour." He complied anyway; the fit was awkward, but it did look good. 

"An art someone or a sex someone?"

"Art, but I think she expects sex." Most of his models did, anyway, and he’d certainly slept with plenty of them. 

"Then we have an hour to figure out what to add to this. Do you still have that cape from last year’s Survey Conference?"

\---

Hanji made him keep the straps on when his model arrived. 

The young woman stared at him for a few moments before awkwardly thrusting her hand forward to shake his. "Hi. I'm Petra Ral."

"Levi. Pleased to meet you, Petra." He shook her hand quickly and then gestured towards the chairs he'd set up in the middle of his flat. "Sit. Do you want anything? Water, tea, wine?"

"I'll have some water."

"Hm." He got wine for himself. "What do you want me to paint?"

"Well, I was thinking my nipples..."

"Fan-fucking-tastic, I haven't had a good nipple in a long time." Levi heard snickering behind him. He turned; Petra already had her shirt off and was unhooking her bra. "What?"

"You seemed so polite when you answered the door."

"First impressions are important. I pride myself in destroying them." He set down his wine and her water on the table. "Feel free to drink when you need to, I don't mind you moving around." A full posed figure was a hassle, especially with the level to which he developed his work, but a nipple would always look like the same nipple, a dick would always look like the same dick, and a cunt would always look like the same cunt. 

Levi spent several minutes scrutinising Petra's breasts, trying to decide which nipple he wanted to use. The right areola was perfectly round and bumpy, the left elongated vertically (he pushed down the need to estimate the eccentricity of the ellipse formed) and significantly more smooth. The left nipple protruded more than the right. 

Usually, those with uneven breasts didn't ask him to paint them. He understood the reluctance; most people found them to be aesthetically unappealing, and Levi admitted that there was a time in his life when he was completely unsettled by any kind of physical asymmetry, though that was more a result of unchecked mental disorder than socialised lack of attraction. (God, that sounded like something right out of Erwin’s most recent book.) But that unevenness, Levi thought, was what made them more interesting. 

"Do you mind if I draw both your breasts?"

"That's fine. I already have my shirt off."

He leaned back and started putting paint on his palette. "Do you like destroying first impressions too?"

"Hm?"

"When I opened the door, you looked like you were ready to pass out. You seem fine now."

Petra shrugged. "I didn't expect you to be so attractive. Or wearing... Well." She looked him up and down, and that sent a little thrill through him. Usually people were turned away by his demeanour (or, if he was honest with himself, by his height and perpetual constipated expression) and so he hadn't been looked at like that in a while. Well, except for-- _No._ Don’t think about him. "By the way, are you really going to paint while wearing white clothes?"

"Yes," he responded, leaning forward to compare the colour he'd mixed with the skin of her breasts. _Too light_ , he thought, and returned to mixing colours. "I also pride myself on my incredible ability to stay very, very clean."

"Dirty mouth, dirty subject matter, clean clothes."

"You know, most of my models like to stay quiet."

"Do you want me to stop talking?"

"No. It's fine. I was going to say I prefer the conversation." 

"Okay. So what inspired you to paint tits?" Petra asked. 

Levi's hand hovered over the canvas, brush an inch away. 

"...Or not."

"My shitty paintings weren't selling.” The story didn’t bother Levi; he didn’t tell many people, but honestly that was because no-one asked. “I became a whore because it sounded more fun than working in a coffee shop like every other person with an art degree I knew. It wasn’t actually all that fun, but I did pretty well for myself; the dead-eyed thing I’ve got going on can look surprisingly sensual when lit by down-facing streetlamps. I think they also liked how small I was. Then someone reminded me to 'paint what you know', so I did." Levi made quick, round strokes, laying the paint down thick while he talked. "Does that bother you?"

"Not at all."

"Thanks."

"For what?"

"For not saying 'why should I?' I'm so fucking tired of people trying to be nice while they squirm."

Petra laughed, and Levi nearly cracked a smile at how her breasts bounced and jiggled. They were small, but freed from the confines of padding and under-wire they moved freely, and almost hypnotically. "You remind me of one of my boyfriends."

"This better not be a pick-up line. I'll kick your ass straight out."

"Oh, shut it." When Levi looked up at her, he noticed a glint in her eye, like she was making fun of him. Most people didn't dare to speak against him; they were all too intimidated. "I was going to say, when he told me he was transgender, and he asked me if that was a problem, I said it wasn't, and he thanked me for not asking him why I should have a problem with it. I get it, I guess, or at least I try to. People don't think highly of each other, for pretty crappy reasons, and they'll push those ideas on to other people. It's obvious why someone would wonder if I had a problem with who they are or what they've done -- enough people do -- so I'd rather just give a real answer than fake ignorance. And anyway, if I ask, ‘why should I have a problem with it?’, that will just make you remember all the reasons why I should."

“Does your boyfriend know you meet strangers in their apartments and pose naked for them?”

“Of course.” She looked off to the side, probably replaying a memory in her head. “It’s how we met. He idolises you, you know.”

“Dump him. Dump him like the biggest, nastiest shit you’ve ever taken.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad. Besides, who would I fight with all the time?”

\---

That was the crux of the matter, wasn't it? 

Levi wanted to smack himself in the face for thinking of that damn student _again_ , but that was what Eren had done. He'd been nice, but it was fake. Only the years upon years of perfecting a resting poker face kept Levi from rolling his eyes when he'd seen Eren's dick stand to attention as soon as Levi's clothes were off, and then he'd followed Levi after class, like he expected something. Like a puppy waiting for a treat. 

He'd been so eager to find out more about Levi, but it was really just to get in his pants. "What a brat."

"Excuse me?" Petra responded, with a hint of anger. 

"Not you. I just remembered someone."

She immediately softened. "You want to talk about it?" 

"Not really. I mostly just want to forget about him."

"No you don't." Levi glared at Petra, but she didn't seem bothered by it. "If you really wanted to forget about him, you would have."

"You say that like you know me."

Petra smiled. "I don't have to. Is he what you’ve been sighing and scowling about all week?"

"If you think I'm going to fuck him--"

"Do you want to?"

"He's a _student_." And that made him, what, a little over half Levi’s age? 

"You're a teacher." She said it like she didn't believe him, and he didn't blame her. He certainly didn’t look like he was old enough to be teaching, and he didn’t act much like someone who could put up with imparting profound knowledge on to a mostly ungrateful audience. 

Levi shrugged. "Visiting professor. For now. Not his professor, technically, but I'm supposed to help with his class."

"You still haven't answered my original question. Do you want to fuck him?"

"Of course I do." So Eren was a little annoying. So Eren looked up to him a little too much for having just met him. So he was more interested in Levi than he really had any right to be. That didn't stop him from being exactly Levi's type -- in fact, it placed him even more squarely in that box. Levi wasn't a fan of being hero-worshipped, but he did like attention. "But he's still a brat, and I'm not going to fuck him, because he's annoying and _young_ \--” he stressed the word “-- and probably wants a _relationship_."

"Commitment issues?"

"Oh, no. _I_ don't have commitment issues.” Levi picked up his mostly-empty glass of shitty wine and downed it. “It's just that everyone else seems to whenever I'm involved, and then they make a big deal of it when they leave. It's a pain in the ass." He could count on one hand the number of relationships he’d had that didn’t end like the mid-season climax of a soap opera, and that hand would have formed itself into the shape of a zero. Even the time he’d pretended to be Hanji’s boyfriend on a double-date had culminated in shouting and brandishing box cutters and Erwin getting accidentally kicked in the face by Levi while his new boyfriend barricaded himself behind the couch (though that was probably the fault of Mario Kart more so than Levi’s inability to hold on to a partner). It was a miracle the guy stayed with Erwin after that clusterfuck. 

"Well, you do seem difficult to get along with," Petra pointed out. 

"I know. It's one of my best qualities."

"You want to know what I think your problem is? You're afraid people will leave you behind."

"Oh, don't you fucking psychoanalyse me. I get enough of that as it is. _You don't let others get too close, because you don't want them to leave you, so you end up lonelier than you would have been otherwise._ " He quoted what Erwin had said to Levi, mid-way through their second semester and his first psychology class. That particular statement had earned Erwin a punch in the face, and that was when they'd gone from vague acquaintances who sat next to each other in psychology and lived down the hall from each other, to something that could almost be called friends. Levi didn't tiptoe around the enormous ex-soldier with one arm, didn't treat him like he was either made of glass or about to snap and wreck everything in sight like everyone else did; Erwin took Levi's harsh words and harsher mood, patiently taking it in little by little until he could see past it, because he saw that there was something worth trying for. 

And, of course, Erwin was completely wrong. First impressions and all. But at least he had since grown out of treating Levi like his own personal charity case. 

"I actually like having people around.” Levi admitted. “I like having friends. I’d probably like being in a relationship if I wasn’t fucking doomed on it. I'm just not willing to change who I am to suit other people."

"That's admirable."

Levi sniffed; it was his way of showing amusement without breaking his stoic expression. "The word you're looking for is ‘conceited’."

"No, I meant what I said. I change myself for others all the time, and I wish I didn't. Once you start, though, it's hard to stop.” Petra looked to the side, then smirked at Levi. “And I think you should sleep with him."

"What?" Levi paused in marking some of the wrinkles in her left nipple. "Are you really telling me to fuck a student?"

"He's not _your_ student, right?"

"That is the worst idea-- No. I'm not even gonna go there. Even putting aside the ethical issues with me being a professor, he's barely more than half my age."

"So am I.” Petra laughed when Levi went stiff as a board. “Did you forget? I’m nineteen, and for the last four days I’ve been sitting in your apartment half-naked and talking explicitly about my many boyfriends, one of whom is older than you are, and my very open relationships with all of them.”

“I _knew_ you expected me to fuck you.”

“Expected? No. Hoped?” She shrugged and smiled; Levi considered flicking paint at her. “So how long will you be teaching?"

"Don't go there."

"I bet it's only this semester."

"Nope. I'm supposed to be teaching next year, too."

"That sucks."

"I'm not going to fuck him after I leave the school, either."

"Yes, you are. You might even do it before the semester's over." Petra smiled. "I think I'm gonna stick around. I want to see how this turns out. And I actually do like you." She reached for her nearly empty glass of water, dipped her fingers in it, and flicked them at Levi, spraying him with droplets. 

Levi nearly fell off his stool, trying to get away from the water. “Do that again,” he warned, “and I’ll pour turpentine down your pants.”

She did it again, of course, calling his bluff.


	4. What Ever Happened to Subtlety?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren feels ridiculous, Levi has very strong opinions about printer paper, Hanji is Hanji but also briefly not Hanji, Armin is concerned, Mikasa gets help from a new friend, and stress is caused by emails and musical auditions and lazy students.

Eren felt ridiculous. He was crushing on a professor, on a model, on an internationally famous artist, on someone who was probably at least ten years older than him (if the rumours about his deceptively youthful appearance were to be believed). The fact that Eren hadn't known he liked guys barely registered in his mind; there was no denying Levi turned him on more than anyone ever had, so why bother? No-one else was going to make an issue of it. 

He’d spent the last few days turning over those few hours in his head. Mostly turning over Levi’s incredible body -- that _ass_ , those _thighs_ , those _arms_ , that _neck_ , those _abs_ , those _eyes_ , that _back_ , and fucking hell that _cock_ for which Eren broke more than one stick of charcoal when Levi changed poses. 

Logically, Eren knew that any good figure drawing model knew to give each artist an equal view of all sides of them during a multi-pose session. That definitely explained why Eren got a fantastic view of every inch of Levi throughout the six poses. It didn’t explain why, after the first, every pose left his head pointed such that Levi had a clear view of Eren’s drawing process. 

They’d done five fifteen minute sketches and one forty-five minute drawing. Eren made it through the whole three-hour studio block without passing out, but he did feel faint and he did briefly consider jacking off in the bathroom during the break. Instead, he popped in his earbuds and dashed out of the room, taking a little walk on the third floor to temporarily clear his head. 

When Eren got back, he swore Levi was deliberately messing with him; the man had set up a rickety wooden armchair on the model stand, facing Eren, and sat in it for the last pose with his legs wide open, left foot up on the seat of the chair, left elbow resting on the slightly splintery arm, and right arm thrown over the chair’s back. He stared off to his right into middle-distance, above the heads of the students a quarter-turn of the room from Eren, but Eren got a very personal view of a very private area. It couldn’t have been a comfortable position, certainly not for three-quarters of an hour, but Levi held it, and his eyes flicked to Eren every few minutes. 

When he’d followed Levi after class, it wasn’t that he was expecting Levi to fuck him on the spot. He was, however, expecting that after so brazenly showing off his balls to the student who had, as Levi put it, nearly jizzed his pants at the sight of him, Levi might be at least willing to humour Eren in a little flirtatious conversation. 

Eren was, apparently, mistaken. Levi didn’t want to give him the time of day. 

At this point, Eren couldn’t even be sure he actually liked Levi. He hadn’t gotten much of his personality; from his little speech at the beginning of class Eren could deduce he had no reservations against vulgarity, and that was confirmed by his harsh responses to Eren’s attempts at conversation. Aside from that, Eren knew almost nothing about Levi. And despite the rejection he’d faced, he still wanted to know more. 

"Jean!" Eren called across the common room. Now that he’d sorted out his own thoughts, Eren had been hoping to find someone with a little experience in such matters to give him some advice, and here was the perfect opportunity; Jean had just walked in the door. "You're into guys, right?" 

Jean considered turning around and going back out into the cold. Instead, he dropped his bag on the table and laid out on the couch. "Not interested, and you know I have a boyfriend." 

"Good, I need advice. So there's this guy--"

"You say that like the entire class didn't see you drooling over Levi," Jean said. "Don't bother; he's too old for you, famous, and a professor -- and you're not exactly a catch."

"Says the guy who looks like a horse."

"Fuck you." Jean did get up at that, heading for the door. Maybe it was time to give the library a try… 

“Not even your dreams!” Eren shouted after him. 

Eren could take rejection, he really could. It was just, if there was _any_ chance that Levi actually was interested in him, and was fighting some internal battle over whether or not to pursue a relationship with a very interested student, Eren wanted to know. 

\---

Levi wasn't their model in the next Anatomy studio, but he did sit in the corner for the first half. He perched on a stool behind Eren; it was distracting to know Levi was there, but at least he didn't feel tempted to stare at him. 

"Do you know you make noises while you draw?" 

Eren jumped. Levi was standing right behind him, but Eren hadn’t noticed him approach. He stepped back to avoid Eren crashing into him. 

"I... w-what?" Eren stuttered. 

"You make noises. You grumble at your work like you're not satisfied with it. The point of drawing isn't to make every line perfect on the first try."

"Says the hyperrealist."

"You have to master the basics before you can focus on the details. My paintings start as tan and brown blobs, and I make sure those blobs are situated properly before I define them. Do the same with your drawing. Get the blobs out first, then turn them into something that makes sense."

"I thought we stopped doing gesture drawing last semester."

"Fuck no. Who the hell told you that?"

"Well, no-one, I just thought--"

Levi cut him off. "Listen, Eren. You always give the form a base and build it up before you give it its definition. Doesn't matter how good of an artist you become; every piece has to start with a foundation and grow from there. I can tell it's going to suck for you, goddamn perfectionist, and trust me I know the feeling, but you have to start every drawing like you're re-learning how to draw from nothing. Let me see what you did last week." 

Maybe Levi had an ulterior motive. Maybe he wanted to see what Eren made of his body. Maybe he wanted to know what Eren focussed on. Maybe he wanted to have his ego stroked a little. Sue him. 

Eren's face turned bright red, but he left his drawing horse and pulled the old sheets from his storage shelf. 

_Well, fuck._ Even if Eren liked to forgo the foundation, he was nothing if not meticulous. Levi recognised himself in the drawings as if he was looking in the mirror. 

But they were tiny. 

The six drawings, each on their own sheet of 18x24" paper, were no more than a quarter of each sheet's size. They were detailed, certainly, but that detail could barely be seen except for up close. 

"Why do you draw so fucking small?"

Eren shrugged. "I'm used to it, I guess. I used to just draw on printer paper."

Levi didn't hide his look of horror. "I think I'm going to vomit.” Eren took a step back, and Levi corrected himself. “No, no, I'll be fine. Never say that again. Never _do_ that again. God, _printer paper_. No. How did Drawing I not beat this out of you? Do the fucking gestures, do them _big_ , take up the whole page and maybe even let the subject fall off the edge. _Then_ get detailed. You'll actually see what you're drawing, and you'll see the detail you're putting in. New page." Levi moved on to the next student without waiting for Eren; he knew when he came back around Eren would have done exactly what he'd said. 

And when he did come back around, and Eren's figure was taking up the entire page, Levi just said, "Not bad. Keep going."

Eren beamed at him, and Levi pretended he didn't notice, but he saved that smile for later. 

\---

Levi wasn’t expecting Hanji, certainly not after Hanji had already been there on Wednesday and the previous Friday, but as soon as the door to his apartment opened and he caught sight of brown hair and thick glasses, he let out a string of curses and immediately addressed his friend. “Hanji, I’m either going to kill this kid or tie him to my bed and fuck him until I can’t see. He’ll bleed, or he’ll be shitting my jizz for a month.” 

Hanji pulled a face, then made up a better greeting. “Good afternoon, Hanji, nice to see you! You too, Levi; those are some nice breasts you’ve got drying in the corner.”

Levi sprawled across his couch, one arm thrown over his face. He lifted that arm to glare at Hanji. 

"Fine. I'll bite." Hanji kneeled down slightly, hands on knees, as if talking to a child, and leaned over Levi. "Poor baby, having trouble keeping his dick and homicidal ideation in check."

"You're an asshole, Hanji."

"Pot, kettle. Does he want to fuck you?"

"I haven't asked him, but his perpetual hard-on whenever I'm in the room gives me the feeling that it might be a 'yes'."

“Then go for it.”

Levi threw his arm back over his eyes. “He’s a _student_.”

“ _Your_ student?”

“Why do people keep asking me that as if a ‘no’ would make it any better?”

“It does. You’re not in control of his grades that way.”

“No, I’m just twice his age and helping with his class.”

“Listen.” Hanji’s voice dripped with venom, and Levi uncovered his face to stare into suddenly cold eyes. “I don’t know what to tell you about your little problem. You want to fuck him, he wants to fuck you, he’s old enough to make his own decisions, and you’re not actually in a position of power over him. I’m not your parent; you don’t need me to tell you what to do. Now can I please get to the point of why I’ve broken into your apartment more than once this week?”

Levi was stunned. The jumpy, excited, and kind of invasive Hanji he knew was nowhere to be found, and that was enough to scare him out of his dramatic angsting on the couch. Tentatively he asked, “Why are you here?” 

“I just came out to Erwin.”

Levi snorted. “Hanji, you came out to Erwin the first time you met him.”

“No, I mean…” Hanji’s eyes closed, face twisting into one of pain. “I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

Hanji sighed. “Remember when we first met, you couldn’t tell if I was a woman or a man? And I told you to decide for yourself.”

“Yeah, and I said it was too much trouble and never assumed you were either. You still haven’t actually told me, by the way.”

“I know I haven’t. I thought you knew…” Hanji repeated. “You were the only one who didn’t pick a side. And you were the only one who was right.”

Levi sat up, his head barely missing a collision with Hanji’s. “Wait, what?”

“That’s why I thought you knew; because you didn’t ever pick one. You used to call me ‘he’ and ‘she’ equally, and then you started calling me ‘them’, and now I don’t think I’ve heard you put a pronoun on me in years, so I really did think you’d figured it out. I didn’t tell anyone for so long. I didn’t think it mattered. But it just fell out.” Hanji started to sound hysterical, voice rising in pitch and speeding up until it was frantic. “I was buying wire and some creep hit on me and kept calling me ‘lady’, and then a co-worker of mine who barely knows me was saying things like ‘we men’ to me, and then I walked into my appointment and I realised Erwin’s probably seen my sex marker on something by now, and I just couldn’t take it anymore!”

“Calm down, you shitty four-eyes,” Levi said, but without his usual harsh tone. He reached out and put a hand on Hanji’s shoulder, trying to anchor his friend. 

“But I--!

“Hanji!” Levi shouted. Hanji stared at him, eyes wide and shiny behind thick glasses. “Calm. Down.”

Hanji nodded, then took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t really know what I am. Don’t know if there’s even a word for it. I just know that I’m not…” Hanji gestured downwards. “I mean, I know you don’t know what’s down there, and I guess I kind of appreciate that you don’t know, but the letters on my documents aren’t me and neither is the opposite. I’ve been holding it in for years because I didn’t know how to explain it, and now I’ve said it but I still don’t know.” 

Levi reached up and dropped his hand into Hanji’s hair, trying to give some comfort without interrupting. 

“Erwin… He’s not exactly an expert or a specialist in this area, but he knows his shit well enough. I think he’s been expecting this. He asked if I want to transition. I don’t think I do. I mean, I’m androgynous enough as it is, I guess. Any sort of transition would just swing me more one way or the other. But maybe I’ll change my mind later.”

“That sounds good. I’m behind you no matter what you do.” Levi tried running his hand through Hanji’s hair, trying not to let any of his disgust at its oily, sticky texture show. His fingers caught in the tangles, and he found himself brushing his friend’s hair. “Is there anything you need from me?”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing, I guess. And I kind want you to paint me.”

Levi’s hand stilled. 

“I mean. You don’t have to, obviously.”

Levi answered slowly. “Not that I’m not willing to do it, because I am, but I paint naked people and you just said you like that I don’t know what you look like under your clothes.”

“I know I did. But I don’t think you knowing would change how you see me.”

Levi nodded. “You’ll still be the same shitty four-eyes no matter what. I can do it once I’m done with those breasts you complimented on your way in. So, one more question: you still love your name like the air you breathe, right?”

Hanji laughed. “Yeah, it suits me. I don’t need you to wrap your head around a new name or anything like that.”

\---

Armin sighed loudly, and it turned into a loud yawn as he finally closed his laptop and left it on his desk. He’d been playing highly addictive flash games for the better part of the day since he left work. Eren was still working on what he claimed was his homework for Drawing II, which involved him scratching down a few lines, groaning in frustration, erasing, and then scratching more lines... and repeat. That -- the frustrated and incessant pencil-scratching, and the groans that sounded just a little too sexual to be ignored -- more than the snoring and the complaining and the getting up at all hours of the night to go steal some of Jean's food from the common fridge, was the reason Armin had invested in a very expensive and very effective pair of noise-cancelling headphones. However, they weren’t exactly comfortable for sleeping in. Neither was Armin’s underwear if he got hard, so he had to put a stop to Eren’s noises before he went to bed. 

"Eren, it's almost midnight. Go to sleep."

"This is due in the morning."

"Tomorrow's Monday, you only have Drawing on Tuesday and Thursday," Armin pointed out. Eren groaned once more, extra loud, and threw his pencil down, leaving a large, dark streak across the page. Armin didn’t mention that he knew Eren had already finished his Drawing homework the previous afternoon. "Do I really know your schedule better than you?"

"Yeah, yeah. Thanks." Eren didn't bother standing; he just sort of flopped over the foot from his desk to his bed, and started wriggling out of his clothes from there. He was unconscious before Armin got up to shut the light off. 

Armin hesitated, catching sight of the drawing. It was obviously Levi, no matter how much Eren tried to pass him off as anyone else, and Armin shook his head, wanting to wake up Eren and shake him until he realised what a bad idea it was to try and pursue this crush. But then, things tended to work out for Eren; he just might have to go through hell first. 

Armin shut the light and got back into bed. He whispered to Eren’s sleeping form, curled up on his bed and barely lit by the street lights two floors below their wide window. “I hope you know what you’re getting into.”

\---

Technically, Mikasa only had this music room reserved until 10 PM, but no-one had it after her so she didn’t bother leaving when her slot was up. She curled up on the beaten-up couch with her laptop and headphones, playing back the last few hours of recordings. Every song on her list of potential performances had been tried. Not a single one was right. 

No song would sound perfect on the first try, but Mikasa expected to at least feel something. She had an attachment to each song she’d tried, but she couldn’t find the right feeling in any of them. 

It was nearing midnight, and Mikasa had a deadline to fulfill. She had to hand in the song she was going to perform to her advisor the next morning or she’d have to drop out of her first-year performance. It wasn’t like she needed the credits, having already taken an extra class the previous semester, but she wanted to earn her place with all the other music majors as soon as possible. 

She leaned back against the couch. At this rate, she’d have to just pick one at random and hope it worked out. 

Mikasa’s laptop pinged, signalling a facebook notification. She switched to her browser and clicked through the multitude of tabs until she found the right one. Her messages icon was lit up, and she hovered over it, seeing a message from Sasha. 

_Hello Mikasa! I heard you singing earlier, but I didn’t want to bother you while you were “in the zone”. :) Your voice reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t figure out who until now! I hope you like this song._

A youtube link followed the message. 

...It couldn’t hurt, right?

The song started out with about fifteen seconds of strings and a piano, then the vocals started. It wasn’t anything Mikasa recognised, but it was right up her alley and similar to a lot of the songs she’d tried over the last few hours, and she could definitely hear the resemblance between her own voice and the singer’s. 

_Do you mind if I use this for a performance?_ Mikasa responded. 

Sasha’s answer came almost instantly. _Sure! :)_

Mikasa listened to the song a few more times, reading the lyrics carefully to commit them to memory. She stood and turned her microphone back on. 

It was almost one in the morning at that point, and she really should have headed home already, but Mikasa sang it anyway. Despite forgetting the words a few times, Mikasa knew this song was the one. She didn’t even need to listen to the recording to know. There was something about it that just felt _right_. 

There was a little bounce in her step as she walked back to Shiga House in the dark. 

\---

Eren hit _send_ and leaned back in his chair; well, that was one more stressful e-mail down. And it had only taken him three days to work up the courage to send it. Eren counted that as a success. 

He stared at the drawings taped to his sliding closet door; the latest Illustration assignment was four pages adapting a scene from _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_ into comic form. Eren had never seen the movies, but the books had painted a very vivid image of the characters in his head, and he’d sketched out the assignment in just over two hours after his Monday classes, which left his Tuesday afternoon totally open for goofing around before he handed it in on Wednesday. Then, joy of joys, he’d have to ink and colour it over the weekend. 

Eren chose Cedric’s death for the assignment. Reading that scene had been a sort of turning point in Eren's life; it was the moment he realised that no matter how much of a hero or genuinely good person someone was, they were still vulnerable. 

It was sad and a little morbid, but it was life. 

Through the open door to his dorm room he waved at Mikasa; she, the lucky owner of a single room, usually kept her door closed and immersed herself in her music when she wasn't in Eren and Armin's room, so it was a rare sight for her to just lounge by her own open door. She waved back, then stood and crossed the hall, a dark-coloured flyer in her hand. 

Up close, Eren realised her hair was wet, probably from her post-fencing shower. 

"Remember what you promised me over winter break?" Mikasa asked. 

Fuck. "Shadow Cast, right?"

Mikasa shook her head; a few drops of water fell from her hair and darkened the shoulders of her t-shirt. "It's not a Shadow Cast, Eren. We put on the show without the movie playing. And you said you would do it this year."

"I know I did. It's just... Is Jean going to be there this time?"

"Yes. But you're not backing out because of him." Eren groaned, and Mikasa flung the flier at his desk. "I know he can be annoying, but he's a good actor and your _friend_. And you already know the whole show by heart anyway. Just try out; if you don't make it, you don't have to do it.” 

Eren briefly considered throwing the audition, but one look at Mikasa’s eyes told him she’d pretty much read his mind. 

“But if you don't try, I’ll find out, and I'll tell Annie you volunteered to help her practice again." 

Annie was technically a dance major, but that was a very thinly-veiled cover-up for her real focus. She was more skilled in martial arts than anyone Eren knew, and had beaten him up in the name of practicing more times than he could count. Recently she’d adopted Reiner and Bertholdt as her own personal human punching bags. Annie even flipped Reiner once, and with his size that was something to brag about. Eren had finally gotten out of her full-body bruising only halfway through the last semester, and the last thing he wanted was to go back. He respected Annie, but he did not want to help her practice. 

At some level Eren knew Mikasa’s threat was an empty one. She wouldn’t really feed him back to the lioness after she’d tried so hard to get Eren out of that situation, but she would probably do something equally unpleasant for him. Mikasa could be protective when she needed to be, but she could also be pure evil when she wanted. 

For a moment, Eren regretted ever telling Mikasa his life’s motto -- _If you don’t fight, you can’t win!_ Granted, the situation during which he’d imparted that bit of motivational wisdom was a world of difference away from this one, but Eren could see the resemblance to his words in Mikasa’s argument. "Fine," Eren agreed. "I'll do it. But I'm only trying out for Eddie."

"That's not how we do this." Mikasa graced him with a rare smile, but it was more mocking than kind. "You can sing _Hot Patootie_ during your audition if you want, but you try out for the play as a whole. Everyone learns every line, and then we pick our roles from a hat before each show."

"So you're telling me I could end up in a maid outfit at any time." 

Mikasa grinned. “Auditions are this Thursday and Friday.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Eren took a look at the flier, then compare it with his own schedule on his phone. He had both of those nights free. 

Mikasa spoke up again, more hesitantly this time. "By the way, Grisha called."

The desk creaked as Eren dug his nails into the wood. "Oh really. What did dear old Dad have to say?"

"Same as usual; he didn't pay all this money for us to become useless, we need to be more responsible with our lives, you know the drill." She paraphrased Grisha’s words rather heavily; he’d been kinder about it, saying something along the lines of _I really wish you would put more thought into your futures_ , but it was all the same, really. They’d overheard him talking to the neighbours often enough during winter break, about how they’d almost certainly end up on the streets if not for him, to know what he really meant. Mikasa sighed and picked at the edges of her ever-present scarf. "I just let him talk himself out. He said he's still going to keep paying for everything, but he's disappointed in us." 

"Asshole," Eren spat out, pushing his rolling chair away from his desk. He slumped down and crossed his arms, not caring that he looked like a child about to throw a temper tantrum. “He could at least pretend he believes in us.”

"It could be worse."

Eren scratched at the scar on his arm, one of many that he still had from the car accident that had killed his mother and almost fatally injured Eren. After all the years that passed, Eren still hadn’t completely recovered from what was supposed to be a temporary memory impairment. "Yeah, I could be dead." He still blamed Grisha for it, and for good reason. So did Mikasa; she hadn’t been in the car at the time, but she’d seen the accident happen. “Doesn’t make him any less of an asshole.”

"So is Professor Levi, and you seem to like him well enough."

"Oh my god." Eren covered his face. "Do you have to keep bringing that up?" He knew Mikasa only mentioned Levi to change the subject, but the new topic was a welcome distraction, despite Eren’s embarrassment. 

"Damn right I do. You realise the midget’s almost twice your age, don't you?" 

" _Yes_ , and I realised it the first five times you said it, too. It's not like I'm expecting anything to _happen_ with him."

"Then you've been missing a lot." Mikasa reached down and ruffled Eren's hair. "I know I can't stop you, much as I want to, so at least be safe."

"What do you mean I've been missing a lot?" Mikasa smiled one last time and left Eren's room. "Mikasa!" 

She was across the hall before he could even finish calling out to her, and she kicked her door shut. Less than a minute later, the sound of violin strings being tuned filled the hallway. 

"Damn it, Mikasa..." 

"What'd she do now?" Armin asked as he came through the door. He dropped his backpack on the ground with a loud _thunk_ , and Eren once again worried about the state of his best friend's back under the weight of three hard-cover textbooks and as many notebooks. 

"She said I've been 'missing something' about Levi. And she _won't fucking explain it to me!_ " Eren raised his voice to a shout, directed across the hall, but didn't expect Mikasa heard anything. 

"Could it be that he wants to sleep with you as much as you do him?" Armin extracted one of his textbooks from the overstuffed backpack. 

"Don't joke with me."

"I'm not joking," Armin said. "He always looks at you like he can't wait for the moment he's alone with you. God, I wish someone would look at _me_ like that. Oh, well; I guess my true love will have to be history."

"Careful, I'll tell the travel guides you're cheating on them."

\---

Levi liked teaching. He doubted anyone could tell, since he talked to his students with the same flat, humourless voice he used at any other time, but he did enjoy imparting knowledge upon younger generations and all that. As long as they wanted to listen. 

However, he had about zero tolerance for bullshit, and he could tell when the students in his Senior Painting class put in only a fraction of the necessary effort. They didn't seem to like his grading methods much; but then, "half-effort, half-grade" was sure to end in tears. 

He didn't particularly care if they cried; certainly not when the "model student" who shouted at him throughout his office hours didn't deserve more than the 50% Levi gave him on his two-week assessment. 

After putting up with the young man's shouting for forty-five minutes, Levi interrupted him. "I don't care that you think you're still the best in the class with a piece like this," Levi finally said. "You can do better than this. I've seen your work from last year, and I've watched you in class. You have talent. _Use it_ , or you won't get a better grade in the future. I will fail you if you don't put in the time and effort expected of you."

"Fuck you." The student stormed out, stomping down the hall. 

Levi toed shut the door to his tiny office. There were still about fifteen minutes left in his office hours, but he'd given every other student at least a C, and after this brat had pitched a fit over his failing grade at the end of class with no reaction whatsoever from Levi, he doubted anyone else would show up to try and get a raise out of him. He didn't have the patience for it anyway. 

He liked teaching. He _hated_ students who felt like they were entitled to good grades, rather than expected to earn them. 

The walking nuisance had tracked dirt into Levi's office, and he grabbed the Swiffer he kept in the corner, wiping it over the area until the floor shined. The office barely looked used; Levi didn't have a lot he cared to keep in there, only a black three-ring binder part way full with his printed-out lesson plans, his tiny laptop, and a drying rack in the corner full of graded work from his Hyperrealism class. There was also a desk with a flat-screen Mac computer on it, an office chair, and a table under the window, all standard for a professor’s office. Levi hadn’t turned the Mac on once since he moved into the room, and the desk drawers were empty. 

It was also immaculately clean. He told the custodians not to bother cleaning his office, because he didn't even let it get dusty over the course of a day. He constantly and only half-consciously wiped fingerprints off his desk and ran dust cloths over his shelves while he dictated lesson plans and two-week evaluations to Siri. 

It was at this point that Levi opened up the notes on his phone and held it up to his mouth. "Terrible temper, but lucky for you I can't cut your grades for that." He saved the note under the student's name, intending to start his next evaluation with that sentence. Then he copy-and-pasted all the finished Hyperrealism evaluations into an email and sent them to Erwin for editing, not trusting Siri to spell anything properly any more than he trusted himself. 

Once the message finished sending, the phone vibrated as six new e-mails came in to Levi's work address. His phone had been getting cell service only sporadically over the last few weeks, and the wi-fi in the art building was down, so a bunch of messages all coming in at once was nothing new. One email was from the previous night, from one Eren Jager. "What does the brat want now?" He tapped the notification. 

The message read:

_Just Levi,_

_I'd like to apologise if I made you uncomfortable when I followed you two Fridays ago, and also for my reaction to your presence in class. It was inappropriate._

_I also want to thank you for helping me during class last week, despite that I was so inconsiderate. I know it's technically your job, but I really appreciated it anyway._

_\- Eren Jager_

At first Levi doubted the e-mail came from Eren at all; it didn't read like anything he would say. But then, Levi didn't know him _that_ well, did he? And the greeting -- "Just Levi", as Eren had jokingly called him that first day -- was convincing enough. 

Still, he didn't respond. Eren had just sent him an e-mail apologising for his crush and boner; Levi wanted no apology for either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it is at this point that i should mention i’m a smith college student, and therefore “wall college” and the surrounding town are loosely based on smith and northampton. except, you know, smith is a women’s college. which is always awkward for me to say since i’m not a woman but. anyway, in case you’re not familiar with smith, it’s a liberal arts college in northampton, massachusetts and is sometimes referred to as “lesbian hogwarts”. regarding the political trend at smith, we put the liberal in liberal arts college (like overwhelmingly so) and northampton itself is like this wonderful clusterfuck of hipster and hippie and punk and queer cultures, among others. it’s already kind of started to come into play but it will even more so very soon. 
> 
> so if anything about the college experience (or life experience) i’m describing seems kind of strange, well, smith is kind of strange. i know i’m not exactly having a 100% typical college experience here. just writing what i know. 
> 
> anyway, i’m going to make references to the political and cultural, uh, bubble of wall college and the surrounding town (which i have not named yet uhh) quite a few times in this fic, i’m sure, so i wanted to let you all know that this isn’t just some made-up fantasy of a world in which there are little bubble havens of forward thought and whatnot. smith’s certainly not perfect, but my mega-queer ass is more comfortable there than i think i would be anywhere else in the world. 
> 
> i’ll stop getting all weepy about my college now.


	5. A Little Bit Of Arlert In My Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin dances, but only between 4 and 5 on Tuesday afternoons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: homophobic slur, body image things, emotional rollercoaster ride

Armin always had a plan. 

Through very carefully-executed methods of close observation and casual conversation (which was definitely not stalking), Armin had managed to procure the full schedules of all the inhabitants who lived on the third floor of Shiga House within the first few weeks of classes -- no small feat, as there were about 30 students on that floor. This was the best time slot. Only four other students didn’t have class, practice, or work in the block before dinner on Tuesdays, but two usually used this hour for working out, one practically lived in the library and was only ever home when it was closed, and the last was Eren, who was holed up in the studio, re-doing a drawing that had been lost to an unfortunate accident involving India ink. He’d be there for another hour at the very least. That certainly didn’t bother Armin; it just meant the room -- the whole _floor_ would be empty. 

Finally. Some real alone time. 

On hands and knees, Armin extracted a dusty cardboard box from under the bed, behind the trash bins stuffed under there to hide the box from prying eyes. Or any eyes, really. _The Stash_ , Armin called it; there wasn’t much in the box, but there was enough that it took up most of a medium-sized U-Haul box, and its specific contents were such that it remained hidden and Armin was in a near-constant panic over the idea of someone finding it. With Eagle-Eyes Eren Jager as a roommate, one could never be too careful. 

Armin didn’t have a lot of secrets. In fact, Armin made a near-herculean effort to have almost no secrets at all, to be as transparent as possible, so that maybe, just maybe, no-one would notice this one. And they hadn’t. 

After a quick check to make sure the curtains were drawn completely closed and the door was locked, Armin opened the box. Blue-gray eyes met faded, soft fabric, and shaking hands reached out to it, pressing the floral print to Armin’s face. It smelled like coming home, and when Armin pulled the loose, flowing fabric on, it felt like home too. 

Home. That was a nice feeling. A feeling of belonging, of comfort. The same feeling came from Armin’s hair style and brightly-coloured, mismatched socks that slid on the temporary linoleum floor of the partially-renovated dorm room. 

In all honesty, Armin had overreacted to Eren’s assessment of the new haircut. But after more than a month of hiding what Armin had only just found words for, it was understandable for Armin to have reacted so strongly to Eren’s comment -- _You’d make a very pretty girl_ \-- but not to turn away from all their other friends as well. They had assured Armin that it was fine, everyone had moments where they’d be set off by something that should be inconsequential, and those reactions weren’t always directed in the right place. They understood, or they said they did... but that didn’t make Armin feel better about ignoring everyone. Friends were supposed to help each other, and Armin had pushed away their comfort and their care, especially Eren’s. He was Armin’s best friend, had been for as long as either of them could remember, and Armin hadn’t even allowed him to apologise. Best friends were supposed to confide in each other, too. 

But this was Armin’s alone-time, to be used for enjoyment, not regret. Not self-doubt. Not sadness. 

Cue: an old iPod, plugged into Eren’s speakers. As soon as the drums started, all the tension built up in the past few weeks flowed out of Armin’s body, replaced by a soothing calm. 

Hands fisted into draping fabric and twined around chin-length hair, and Armin took a look in the mirror, swishing the fabric back and forth. The reflection almost looked right. The fringe helped, now that it brushed over Armin’s eyebrows. 

Armin smiled, as if an audience was watching rather than just a reflection. 

A shout of “Hey!” from the speakers spurred Armin into movement; shoulders shaking, hips swaying just a little, and Armin sang along with a song found entirely by accident. It must have been fate at work the day Armin had checked Facebook and seen an ad for a concert coming up in town… Googled the band out of curiosity… listened to their newest album on YouTube… tried to explain away the tears Eren saw as caused by a sad movie. 

Armin wasn’t usually one for crude gestures, but it just seemed _right_ to flip off the mirror while screaming faggot! along with the song. The simple symbol and the bitchy smile grinning back from the mirror made Armin more adventurous, and the chorus brought more exuberant swaying and playing with hair, like Armin had seen other girls do, and shouting the lyrics to the empty dorm room and the happy twin in the mirror. 

It was easy to lose oneself in music, and it was times like these that Armin completely understood Mikasa’s obsessive passion about it. There was something to be said for finding exactly the right song to make your heart sing it back. The feeling was like going on a journey to some unseen place -- and it was no secret how much Armin loved the idea of travelling. 

When the chorus came around a second time, Armin hopped up onto Eren’s bed, using it like a stage, and pretended to shout into an invisible microphone. There was some jumping that rocked the bed frame and a high kick that almost led to a fall, but Armin stepped down to the floor before the second chorus ended. 

Picking up the bunched-up excess fabric covering thighs that no longer shook at what they wore, Armin waved it through the air, turning this way and that, and then spun around, laughing. 

As Armin stumbled to a stop, an image clicked mentally -- the lit screen of a beaten-up flip phone on Armin’s desk. Armin glanced at it while sashaying by. 

_Missed call from Eren Jager_

“Hm?”

Something else clicked, audibly, and Armin’s heart skipped a beat. 

_No._

“Hey, Arm, you seen my pens?” Eren shouted over the music and the loud beating of a heart fit to burst. “Uh.”

Armin didn’t turn around, just clutched at the folds of fabric that could no longer be hidden away. There hadn’t been a plan for this. There had been perfect plans to _avoid_ this very situation, but no plans for how to deal with it should it happen. No plans for what to do should Armin’s little escapist dance party be crashed by an unwitting roommate. 

“Ar-- Um. This…” Eren stuttered. “This, uh, isn’t what you usually listen to.”

Armin’s face heated up. Eren stayed quiet; he was taking in the last repeat of the bridge. 

_You want them to see you like they see every other girl._

The door shut. It wasn’t loud, not in relation to the music, but it was timed perfectly such that, had the music been quieter, the door might have censored the slur for which Armin had flipped off the mirror not two minutes earlier. Eren didn’t miss it, though, nor did he miss the way Armin flinched. 

Warm arms wrapped around pale shoulders. Eren’s face appeared in the mirror over Armin’s shoulder. He smiled at his friend’s reflection; Armin still stared at the floor. 

“It suits you. The dress,” Eren said. “Same colour as your eyes.”

Bless him, Armin thought, for not making a big deal out of it, but there _had_ to be a catch. Eren was a great friend, always had been, but there was no way even he would let Armin get away with this. Armin’s face, if possible, turned redder. 

Eren pulled at the pink tip of Armin’s right ear. “Adorable.”

“What are you doing, Eren?” Armin’s voice cracked. 

“Hugging my friend.” Eren leaned forward a little, resting his chin on Armin’s shoulder. His breath made a lock of Armin’s hair fan out, and it tickled both of their faces. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Why?”

Eren shrugged, then tightened his hold on Armin. “You looked like you needed it.”

The opening of _True Trans Soul Rebel_ picked up after a moment of radio silence; Armin felt a few tears fall. Eren reached up and brushed them away, and Armin was reminded of when they were kids, holding hands as they ran through the streets and wiping each other’s tears after bullies taunted them, sneaking out of their houses and into each others’ bedrooms and embracing each other while they slept to keep away nightmares. But this wasn’t a nightmare, this was real life, and Eren was holding Armin like they hadn’t done in years, wiping away tears with his thumb before they could fall and dry in tracks on Armin’s cheeks. 

“Hey, shh, there’s no reason to cry.”

“Are you really okay with all this?” Armin asked. 

“Okay with… Of course I am. You’re one of the most important people in my life. That’s not going to change, ever.” 

“You can’t promise that.” It hurt to say, but if Armin was going to be realistic about this, there was no use in lying. 

“I’m not promising it. I’m showing you.” 

Armin leaned back a little into Eren’s embrace. If this could be them, if Armin could enjoy it for even a minute longer…

“If I promised, that would be like I needed to sign it in blood to force myself. But no -- even if I wasn’t already totally on board with this, I would _make myself_ be okay with it because it’s _you_.”

“So you already are okay with it?”

“Yes. I know this probably isn’t how you wanted me to find out…” Eren trailed off. 

“No. It isn’t.” It was the _last_ way Armin wanted _anyone_ to find out. 

Eren nodded, his chin still rubbing against Armin’s shoulder. “Do you want to tell me the way you planned to?”

“I didn’t. Plan to, I mean. I didn’t have a plan. I was sort of… putting it off.” Armin gave the mirror a rueful smile, still not quite meeting the gaze of either pair of eyes in the reflection. “I think part of me was still hoping it would just go away and I wouldn’t have to tell you, ever.”

“I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but I think it’s a little late to go back now.”

“Yeah,” Armin agreed. Eren let go and took a step back, allowing Armin room to turn and face him. “I’ve never even said it to myself. Not out loud, ever, and barely in my head.”

“That’s fine. Take as long as you need.”

“You have art to do--”

“I have a best friend who’s been going through some tough shit, and I didn’t even come close to understanding what was going on until a few minutes ago. My art can wait. You’re more important.”

Armin felt tears threaten to fall again, but willed them away with a shake of the head. That was Eren for you; always determined to take over the world, but also willing to put his needs aside for his friends. Taking a more authoritative stance -- shoulders back, chin up, feet apart -- Armin took a deep breath. 

And then let it out. 

“I can’t do this.”

“Sure you can,” Eren said, and with such conviction that Armin almost believed him. 

“You have too much faith in me.”

“That faith comes from knowing you as long as I have.” Eren placed his hands on Armin’s shoulders, then, when Armin tried to look away, moved one hand to gently turn Armin’s face toward his. “You once told my dad to fuck off -- those were your exact words -- when he tried to pull me out of art camp in middle school. Mikasa can’t even talk to him like that, let alone me. And when kids made fun of you for reading all the time you ranted at them _so hard_ about the book they’d tried to take from you that you got them to _read it_. You can do this.”

“I can do this,” Armin repeated, then took another deep breath. “Eren.”

“Yes?”

“I’m--” Another breath, and Armin held it for a few moments, then let it out in a rush. “I’m a girl.” The words left her lips in a rush, and instantly she felt lighter, like she was walking on a cloud. Another sentence bubbled up and she didn’t fight to hold it back, but rather set it free with a push. “I’m a transgender girl.” She jumped forward and threw her arms around Eren’s waist, hugging him tight. “I’m a girl.” 

“Good thing we’re in a co-ed house,” Eren said. He ran his fingers through his friend’s hair and smiled down at her. 

She laughed, then hiccoughed once. “Yeah.”

“So, do I still call you…?” Eren trailed off. 

For a moment, she wasn’t sure what Eren was asking, but then it clicked. Her name. “Armin. Yeah. For now, at least.” She didn’t exactly have an alternative lined up, and she did like her birth name, even as masculine as it was supposed to be. When it was pronounced right, it was kind of… cute. 

“Armin,” Eren whispered. As if he’d read Armin’s mind, he made the extra effort this time to say it perfectly, like they were back in high school German and Eren was trying to impress the teacher to bring up his abysmal grade. This time, though, rather that sounding cocky and expectant, Eren was caring, and his bright eyes softened when Armin hugged him tighter. He combed through Armin’s hair once more, and then wrapped his arms back around her shoulders. 

Armin looked up. Their noses brushed, but neither of them moved away. Armin felt all her breath leave her at the warmth in Eren’s eyes, and it took her a moment to remember why she’d looked up in the first place. Oh, right, she had a request. “And, Eren?”

“Mm-hmm?”

“Don’t tell anyone. I want to tell them on my own.”

“Okay.” Eren looked worried for a moment, but then spoke up again. “Don’t freak out, but, well, Mikasa should be back soon. Do you want to tell her?”

Ah. Right. “I probably should.” Even though she hadn’t intended for Eren to find out, it didn’t sit right with Armin not to tell Mikasa, too. 

“Hey, don’t feel like you have to. You tell her when you’re ready.”

Armin turned her head and looked back at the mirror -- at her shoulders, still a bit too wide but tolerable, and mostly hidden for the moment by Eren’s embrace; at her hips, padded by the shape of the dress where it puffed out below the low waistline. And then she looked into her own eyes, and realised she hadn’t smiled quite like this in a long time. Armin wanted to share that feeling. “I want to.” The determination in Armin’s voice surprised her. “I’ll tell her tonight.”

Eren nodded, then looked down at Armin’s outfit. “So, you gonna keep the dress on?”

“No, I’ll probably change back before she gets here.” As much as she loved her one and only dress, Armin wasn’t ready to risk anyone else seeing her in it. Despite how Eren had immediately accepted her, she couldn’t deny that she was scared. “Go back to your art, I’ll let you know when Mikasa’s back.”

“You sure you don’t want me to stay with you?”

Armin shook her head. “I have a solo dance party to finish.”

Eren ruffled Armin’s hair, earning a loud, “Hey!”, and looked around for the sketch pens he’d originally come for. He hugged Armin one last time before leaving. 

Armin flopped down on her bed, her dress billowing around her as she fell on her back. She put her hands on her face, realising all of a sudden that her cheeks were still very warm. She swore and covered her eyes, but her embarrassment was soon forgotten. 

“I’m a girl,” she repeated. “I’m a girl. I’m a girl. I’m a girl.” Armin laughed aloud. “Damn it, Eren Jager, how do you always know what to say?” She kicked her legs, then threw her arms down on the bed at her sides. After a few minutes of just laying there, she sat up, dangling her legs off the side of her bed, before getting off the bed and plucking the iPod out of its speakers. At that point it had moved on from the two Against Me! songs and into music more easily suited to dancing and less directly connected to Armin’s bottled-up feelings about being a trans woman, finally uncorked by her best friend in the world. She re-started the playlist before setting the music player back down on the dock. 

_Your tells are so obvious…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs are “transgender dysphoria blues” and “true trans soul rebel” both by against me!. while i’m a dfab non-binary trans person and not a trans woman i’ve still listened and danced to both of them more times than i can count because yeah, i feel that. the rest of armin’s playlist is probably some house and some of the indie hip-hop she was listening to in the first chapter, but i’m not super familiar with either of those genres.


	6. My Smoothie Brings All The Boys To The Yard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi’s head is a fun place to be. Mikasa continues to be a low-level empath or something. Armin’s friends are full of love. When the fuck did Eren get so blushy?

Immediately upon setting foot back out into the cold, Eren regretted trying to brave it in just a sweatshirt. It had started to snow, and that would normally be Eren’s cue to go back up to his room and get his winter coat, but he wasn’t about to disturb Armin’s dance party a second time. 

The revelation had come as a surprise, but not exactly a shock. Armin had hinted at it in little ways, but Eren hadn’t picked up on any of them, and he blamed both his completely shot memory and his pre-conceived notions of who Armin was for that loss. He wished, for her sake, that she could have told him under better circumstances, but she seemed happy when he left. 

All throughout the next hour of carefully laying down ink on his Drawing homework, Eren thought of Armin. How would Eren talk about her to others? Would he treat Armin like a guy, call her “him” and try not to cringe as the words left his mouth? How would that even make her feel? 

He supposed he could try to just avoid that sort of thing all together, and talk about Armin without putting a gender to her, until she was comfortable with coming out to everyone else, but he wasn’t sure he could reliably keep that up. Eren was good with words, but those words came as word vomit, and when he had to really sit down and think out what he was saying it rarely turned out well at all. That was how he’d nearly failed his required writing-intensive course the previous semester; papers were not kind to Eren. Too much editing. And that was what he’d have to do, in his head. That might just give Armin away even faster, with Eren stuttering out half-formed sentences only to rework them midway, and repeat himself until he got it right. 

Would he even remember?

“Fuck,” Eren muttered to the otherwise empty room. He sighed and tried to focus on his drawing; it was nearly done, anyway. “Shit.”

“Don’t fuck shit.” 

Eren nearly knocked over his cup of ink -- _again_ \-- when he heard Levi’s voice behind him. He made a quick save, diving for the cup and steadying it with both hands while Levi’s quiet footsteps drew closer. 

Levi pulled up a chair next to Eren and draped himself over it, sitting sideways in it with one arm thrown over the back and his legs crossed at the knee. “Trust me, it’s a bad idea. I’ve never done it but it sounds disgusting.”

“Um. Hi.” It was at this point that Eren realised he’d been so preoccupied with Armin that he hadn’t thought of Levi once in the last hour. That was an accomplishment in his eyes; thoughts of the painter had crept into Eren’s head and invaded every last spot since they’d first met, and he hadn’t gone ten minutes since then without thinking of him. 

Levi peered at the drawing; it was a still-life, which Eren found immensely boring, but that was the assignment. “Not bad. The shading is really true to life. And you covered the whole page, too; good for you.” He made a little wave with the fingers of his right hand, then snapped a few times. 

“It’s not a poem,” Eren mumbled. “Did you get my e-mail?” He tried not to blush, but was pretty sure he failed spectacularly when he felt heat spread across his face. 

“Yeah.”

Eren finally looked Levi in the eye. He noticed, for the first time, that Levi looked more awake than usual -- and it was because he was wearing eyeliner. _Damn it, he looks good._ “You didn’t respond.”

“I just saw it an hour ago, first of all, so calm your shit, and second, I didn’t think it merited a response.” Levi inspected his nails on the hand he’d snapped with, as if he’d just spotted some dirt or paint under one of them. “You’re apologising for things you have no control over. All I really want to see an apology for is you saying you drew on printer paper. Now _that_ is disgusting.”

An hour ago… Levi might have been reading his message while Armin was coming out to him. Eren dragged his eyes away from Levi’s face when he realised the meaning of _things you have no control over_. “Sorry. For the paper thing. My dad was never really happy with me being into art, so the only way I could do anything outside of, like, art class in school was if I stole from his printer or doodled in my notebooks, and I hated having all the lines in the way. I’d have preferred giant sketchbooks, I promise. But you use what you have available.”

“I forgive you. I kind of know the feeling.” For Levi, though, “using what he had” meant stealing spray paint from the Home Depot or leftover wall paint from construction crews, and slapping it on the dirty brick walls of his hometown, because if he couldn’t make it shine with absolute _clean_ , then he might as well make it catch a few eyes. He was good; he’d always been at the very least good when it came to art, for as long as he could remember. Some of his work was still up on the abandoned buildings, and he’d seen pictures of a few of his more elaborate pieces online, attributed to “Le Creux”, the moniker he’d tagged them with. They were grotesque, to be quite honest; huge murals of naked giants eating humans, who fought them off with little more than swords that looked like the blades of box cutters if he had the patience to do that level of detail. There were always comments trying to pick apart his work; the most common assessment was that they represented capitalist societies, and Levi couldn’t say they were wrong, exactly, but really he’d just painted them because he was angry at the world for leaving him in the gutter to rot. Which, in all honesty, was not that far off from “capitalist pigs feeding on the poor, who barely have the means to fight back”. 

“Why are you here?” Eren blurted out, yanking Levi out of his memories. He’d been curious ever since Levi joined him, but it was only as the question left his mouth that he realised, _of course_ ; Levi was a professor and probably had an office in this building or a class he was leaving. 

Levi allowed himself the tiniest smirk while Eren wasn’t facing him. The wide neckline of Eren’s shirt -- why did he always seem to wear boat-neck shirts? -- offered Levi a hypnotic view of the student’s neck as it sloped down into his exposed collarbones. _Keep it in your pants, Levi_ , he told himself. “I’m grading. Or, I was. Just finished. I had to take a piss, and I heard you grumbling on my way back.”

“Oh.” Eren had a habit of mumbling his thoughts to himself; it helped him keep them in order. It had also been a habit responsible for letting out more than one of his own private thoughts, and he’d been thinking about Armin, so it worried him. “What did you hear?”

“Couldn’t make out anything until you started swearing. You seemed angry.”

“Not angry. Just… distressed. Worried.” He sighed. “A little confused, too.”

“You want to talk about it?”

Eren looked back at Levi; the man’s expression betrayed nothing, and Eren remained shocked that he’d asked. Levi didn’t seem like the kind of person to go around asking students to pour their hearts out to him. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

“If it’s about me…” Levi put his hands up in front of him and looked away. 

“No!” Eren interrupted. “No, it was about, um, a friend of mine.”

“Your love life sure is complicated, brat.” Levi knew he was stepping into dangerous territory here, egging on Eren with little digs at his infatuation, and tried to reign in his natural response of unwelcome dry humour. 

“It’s not a love life thing. She just.” Eren shut his mouth and pulled his lips in between his teeth, biting then to keep himself from saying anything more. 

“Indulge me a little. I won’t tell anyone, and you look like you need to talk about it.”

Eren sighed. “Okay, well, I can’t tell you who, but a friend of mine just came out to me. As transgender. And she--”

Levi interrupted him. “So, ‘she’, as in, she’s a trans woman.”

“Yeah. She asked me not to tell anyone, and I was thinking, how do I talk about her with other people until she comes out to them? Do I keep calling her a guy? Do I just try not to gender her at all?”

“Hm. Well, interestingly enough, I know the feeling; a close friend of mine just told me a few days ago that I was right in not assuming a gender at all. I’ve been talking about that one with no gender for six years now. It’s not as hard as you might think.”

“I’m worried I’ll screw it up. I’m not really that great with, um, sentence structure. I kind of just say whatever comes to mind.”

“Don’t I know it.” The comment slipped out before Levi could bite it back, and he tried not to react to the blush that once again took over Eren’s face. “Explain to her what you’re worried about, and ask her what she wants you to do. She’ll probably appreciate you care enough to think that hard about it.”

“I hope so. I found out in a kind of not-ideal way, so I don’t want to pressure her too much.”

Levi hummed a sigh. “Jager, I’m gonna sound like an old fart trying to give you advice like this, but if you have to make a choice between asking and assuming, always ask. You’ll regret it if you make the wrong assumption, and then you’ll put her under double the pressure -- first, you fuck up, and second, she has to correct you.”

Eren nodded slowly. He didn’t really have anything else to say, and Levi didn’t speak either, so he picked his pen back up and dipped it in the ink, continuing on his drawing. 

Levi sat and watched for the last twenty minutes until Eren was done. Leaving the page on the drawing board to dry, Eren cleaned off his brushes and cups and returned the bottles of ink to their place in the cabinet. When he returned to his drawing, Levi was leaning over it and scrutinising it from various angles and distances. 

“You’ve got a good eye for detail,” Levi said. 

“Thanks. That’s some pretty high praise, coming from you.” 

Levi glanced at Eren; there was something like a grin in his eyes. A little bit flattered, a little bit proud… a lot predatory. But Eren missed it, looking at his drawing. 

Eren lightly touched the ink on the page; it was dry, and he picked it up and deposited it in his shelf. He checked his phone; Armin hadn’t texted him, and there was still a little time left before Mikasa would return from class. He wondered if he could get away with asking Levi… “I’m gonna go get a smoothie from the campus centre before dinner. You want to come?”

Levi raised his eyebrows; he looked a little impressed. “You’re not trying to ask me on a date, are you?”

“Um. Well, I can’t promise my friend who works in the cafe won’t think that’s what it is, but it doesn’t have to be.”

“Huh. Humour me for a second; how old do you think I am?”

Eren shrugged. “People say you’re older than you look, so, I don’t know, thirty? I tried looking you up to find out, but your Wikipedia page just says your birthday’s Christmas; it doesn’t say a year.” 

He was spot-on, but Levi wasn’t about to tell him that. “And that doesn’t bother you?”

“No, not really. Eleven years seems like a big gap to some people, but I don’t really care.”

Eleven years. That made Eren nineteen. “And what if I’m older?”

Eren shrugged again. “Then you’re older. Doesn’t change that you’re…” Blinking a few times, Eren redirected his sentence. “You know. You. Anyway, I don’t expect anything, so it’s really not a big deal. You don’t have to try and discourage me; I get it. Teacher, student.” He gestured at Levi, then at himself. “Not a thing. I know.”

If only Eren knew Levi was just trying to discourage himself. “Let’s go get your smoothie.”

\---

Across campus, in the middle of her Rock History class, Mikasa knew Armin was happy. Absolutely blissfully happy. 

Armin’s flurry of changing emotions over the past ten minutes had confused the hell out of Mikasa. There was tension, followed by freedom, and then brief but absolute terror -- and here was happiness. 

Mikasa smiled, just slightly, and returned her attention to the professor. 

From behind her, Jean leaned forward in his seat and whispered in her ear. “You okay? You haven’t written anything for ten minutes.”

“Yeah,” she whispered back. “Just got distracted.”

Mikasa tapped out her notes on her laptop, while Jean hand-wrote his, hand flying across the page but still leaving behind legible words. Mikasa’s handwriting looked more like a tangled spring, looping and barely identifiable as writing, but she typed more than fast enough to keep up with the class, as long as she wasn’t distracted by thoughts of Eren and Armin’s wellbeing. 

With a few minutes of class left, Mikasa felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She slid it out, glancing at her professor to make sure he wasn’t looking, and checked the message Armin had sent her. 

_come to our room when u get back from class ok? -A_

She sent back a ‘sure’ and typed the homework assignment at the top of her notes, then packed up. 

Jean walked alongside Mikasa on her way back to the dorm. They were silent for the walk, preferring to keep their faces covered against the cold and the light snow, and he left Mikasa at Trost House, waving to her and promising to see her at dinner. At Shiga House, she dropped off her bag in her room, then crossed the hall. The door was open, and Armin lay on Eren’s bed, looking up when Mikasa came in. 

“Hey,” Armin greeted. 

\---

Eren texted Armin, asking if she wanted a smoothie; she responded in the negative, so he ordered himself a mango, orange, and mint one and sat on one of the counter stools. Levi ordered something bright pink for himself as well and sat down next to Eren. 

“Strawberry?” Eren asked. 

“Mm-hm. And peppermint.” Levi nodded and took the lid off his cup, holding on to the rim with the tips of his fingers before sipping it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Eren quickly look the other way; he decided not to mention it. 

“Why are you here?” Eren asked. 

“You asked me to come with you.”

“You could’ve said no.”

“If you didn’t want me here, you shouldn’t have asked me to come.”

“I know!” Eren shouted; a few students turned to look at him, and he lowered his voice. “I know. I do want you here. I just don’t know why you said yes.”

In all honesty, Levi didn’t really know either. He was attracted, sure, but he still hadn’t decided what he wanted to do about it, if anything. It still seemed like a terrible idea. It _was_ a terrible idea. And still, he was doing nothing to push Eren away; in fact, he was encouraging the brat with all his special attention. He almost responded with “I don’t know”, but at the last moment changed it to, “You’re interesting.”

“I am?” Eren asked, clearly shocked. 

“You are. Something about you makes me want to get to know you better.” Levi felt a strong sense of deja vu -- like he’d seen this porno before. Time for damage control. “Probably not the best idea, considering it’s you.” _You call that damage control? You’re fucking hopeless. Might as well take him over the counter right now. No, **don’t** imagine it--_

At that moment, the drink mixer walked by and did a very obvious double-take. “Eren? And, uh, Mr. Levi?”

“Hey, Sasha,” Eren greeted, while Levi said, “Never call me ‘Mr. Levi’ again.”

“Yes, Sir!” Sasha saluted him, and Levi stared her down until she sheepishly moved away from the counter. 

“Was that the one you were talking about?” Levi asked Eren. 

“Yep. Her shift ends when dinner starts, which means she’ll tell everyone over the table that she saw us together. Sorry.” Eren’s phone buzzed at that moment, and he checked it to see a message from Armin. 

_mikasas back. -A_

“I have to go.” Eren locked his phone and held it up. “Friend’s looking for me.”

“See you in class, Eren.”

Eren flinched a little when reminded, but then he grinned at Levi. “You called me by my name.”

“I’ve done it before.”

“I know.” He picked up his sweatshirt off the counter stool and grabbed his drink before continuing. “I like how you say it.”

Levi waved him off, pushing down the little flare of heat that ran through him. That wasn’t his best idea, as he found out when it pooled dangerously close to his groin, and he thought, _I bet you’d love to hear me scream it_. “Go. Your friend is waiting for you.” When Eren was finally out of the cafe and tugging on his green Wall sweatshirt in the entrance of the campus centre, Levi called out to Sasha, who was mixing another smoothie a few feet from him. “Do you serve alcohol here, by any chance?”

“No, sir,” Sasha squeaked. 

“Damn.”

\---

Armin was shaking when Eren joined the room; she bounced her leg, and it shook Eren’s bed. He put a hand on her knee, trying to calm her down, and she leaned into him and sighed. 

“Is this the part where you tell me you’ve started dating?” Mikasa asked. 

“What?!” Armin shouted, going red in the face. “No!”

“Oh.” 

“And if we were,” Eren said, “we wouldn’t tell you like this. Armin would tell you we were going out some night and ask you to help he--uhhh with picking out something to wear. Right?” Eren looked at Armin, forcing a smile and hoping his slip-up had flown right over Mikasa’s head. He knew it was unlikely. 

Armin shook her head. “You’re hopeless.” She launched into the story of how Eren had crashed her one-person party. 

She started by explaining that she knew everyone on the floor was out of their rooms, and skipped over how she was dressed, unconsciously building up more tension as she rambled about inconsequential things like how she danced. “Eren walked in halfway through the first song; he texted me first, but I didn’t hear my phone. And he came in, and I was spinning around to Against Me! and wearing a dress and, well.” Armin paused, trying to gather her words up; she’d lost them, scattered all over her head once she reached the point of revelation. 

Mikasa nodded once. “You know, I wrote my application essay about her. Laura Jane Grace, I mean. She’d just come out when I was applying. She’s very brave. I really respect her.”

“So I guess you know how this story ends, then.”

“I don’t know.” Mikasa shrugged. “Do I?”

“Yeah. I’m a girl.” It still didn’t come out naturally; maybe someday it would. 

“No, you’re not.”

Armin stared. She’d thought Mikasa would understand, especially the way she’d said she _respected_ … but that’s what Armin got for assuming. “Yes, I--”

“You’re a woman, aren’t you?” Mikasa smiled, then stood and moved over to Eren’s bed on Armin’s free side, throwing her arms around her in a tight hug. “Let me know if you want to borrow anything from me.”

Armin hiccoughed around the lump in her throat that throbbed as she fought not to cry. “Don’t scare me like that!”

“Sorry.” Mikasa reached past Armin and grabbed hold of Eren’s shirt, tugging him forward to join the hug. 

“Armin sandwich!” Eren yelled, squeezing them both. 

Armin cried out, shouting that she couldn’t breathe around bouts of laughter. “I love you guys so much.”

Eren squeezed harder, rubbing his cheek against Armin’s hair. Mikasa kissed her cheek. “We love you too, Armin,” Eren whispered. “We always will.”


	7. The Sound of Pants Filling The Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Wild Boyfriend Appears. Chatrooms still exist. Mistakes are made. Sasha is the sneakiest. Armin studies. Eren is eloquent. Freddie Mercury makes an appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who’s read/commented/kudos’d/bookmarked/subscribed. i appreciate you all so much. <3
> 
> warnings: unintentional misgendering; sexual content

The trio remained in Eren and Armin’s room until about a half-hour into dinner. Eren brought up the concerns that had plagued him through his time in the studio, asking how Armin wanted them to talk about her to their other friends until she came out to them. 

Armin was unsure at first; it was on the long list of things she’d never considered because she didn’t know she’d be coming out to anyone any time soon. “I guess just keep calling me a guy for now. I don’t love it, but I think I can deal with it for a little longer, at least until I have some idea of how they’ll react.”

“I can promise you at least one other person will be immediately accepting,” Mikasa assured. She refused to explain further, saying it wasn’t her place to tell, but it helped Armin to know she had at least three friends who would be behind her no matter what. 

The dining hall was just about full to capacity when they finally arrived. Half of their usual table had been taken over by students they didn’t know and who shot a few dirty looks at their group when they all shuffled around and shared chairs to accommodate three more. 

Sasha, Connie, Jean, and another young man none of the trio knew were all leaning into the middle of the table, as if plotting some conspiracy, but they all straightened in their seats after Connie spotted them coming over with their plates above the sea of seated students. 

“Hello!” Sasha said, a little too loudly. “We weren’t talking about you!”

Armin flinched a little, assuming the worst and that it was about her, but Eren laughed, trying to defuse her worries before they got anywhere. “I knew you were going to tell everyone the second you saw us.” 

“Saw who?” Mikasa asked. She sat on half of Sasha’s chair. Jean moved over to share with the new guy, leaving his seat open for Eren and Armin to share.

“Me and Professor Levi. It’s not what you think!” Eren shouted before Mikasa could turn the devious look in her eyes into words. “He passed by the studio I was in, came in to see my work, and then I said I wanted a smoothie and he tagged along. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“It sounds like a big deal to me,” Jean said. He grinned. “I’m impressed. Didn’t think you really had it in you to snag a teacher.”

“We didn’t _do_ anything. It wasn’t even a date.”

“Sounds kind of like a date to me,” Armin said. “I mean, _smoothies_.”

“Get it, little brother,” Mikasa mumbled. Eren countered with “I’m a year older than you!”, and she laughed. 

“You guys are fucked up.” Eren shook his head, but smiled before shoveling food into his mouth. “So,” he said around half-chewed pasta, “who’s the new guy?”

“Oh! Shit. Sorry.” Jean smiled at his seatmate. “This is Marco.”

“The elusive boyfriend, apparently,” Sasha added. She cupped a hand around her mouth and stage-whispered, “I think he’s too good for Jean.” Jean kicked her under the table. “Ow! See what I mean?”

Marco held up a hand. “Hey. I guess you’re Eren then?” Eren nodded, and Marco looked between the other two additions to the table. “So, um, which one of you is Mikasa?”

Armin’s fork clattered on the table; she whipped her hand up over her mouth. To anyone else, it would have looked like she was trying not to laugh, but really she was just trying to hide her wide smile, pleasantly surprised that someone couldn’t tell which of them was the one known to the rest of the table as A Girl. She met Mikasa’s eyes across the table; Mikasa looked just as shocked, her lips slightly parted. Armin felt a hand on her knee -- Eren’s. She started to shake slightly, hoping it came across as more so contained laughter and not so much contained silent sobs of joy. 

“ _She’s_ Mikasa,” Sasha said, pointing to the girl sharing her seat. “Armin’s a _boy_.”

Behind her hand, Armin bit down on her bottom lip until it hurt, to stop herself from saying anything before she was ready. Eren’s hand squeezed harder on her leg, but both he and Mikasa kept smiles plastered on their faces. 

The rest of their friends moved on in conversation. Eren and Mikasa kept up with it, throwing in their own comments every once in a while and hoping no-one called attention to Armin. She poked at her food, hanging her head so her hair would hide her face. Eren kept his hand on her knee under the table, one point of contact to ground Armin. 

Later that night, after the lights were off and Eren was curled tightly in his customary blanket burrito, he heard a sniffle across the room. 

He was out of his bed in seconds, and stumbled across the room by the dim light entering through the wide windows. He sat gently on the side of Armin’s bed. “Hey,” Eren said, touching what he hoped was her shoulder. 

Armin’s hand shot out of the blankets, gripping Eren’s tight, and she dragged him down, throwing half her blanket around him. Eren was pressed right up against her back, and though he was a little stunned, he knew a cry for help when he saw one. He leaned into her and wrapped an arm around her waist, and he stroked her hair while she cried herself to sleep. 

\---

 _*** Welcome to Chatty!_  
_*** date and time: Wed Feb 5 2014 9:30 AM_  
_*** mackerman created ars104 chatroom_  
_*** sbraus, cspringer, jkirschtein were added to ars104_  
mackerman: place your bets  
jkirschtein: ???  
sbraus: $5 on next week  
mackerman: booooo you can do better than that  
mackerman: when is my brother going to bang the midget  
jkirschtein: you mean professor levi?  
cspringer: u dont sound like mikasa did some1 hack ur accout?  
sbraus: fine $10 on after class next friday  
cspringer: *acount  
cspringer: ah fuck it  
mackerman: i’m glaring at you right now connie take a look  
cspringer: fuckn shit mikasa ur terifying  
cspringer: fine $20 for next 2sday  
mackerman: that’s the spirit  
jkirschtein: is eren trying out for RH? if so i put 20 on opening night  
mackerman: yeah he’s trying out tomorrow.  
mackerman: that long though?  
jkirschtein: yea  
jkirschtein: if they’re not already doing it then eren’s gonna chicken out  
jkirschtein: he’ll need a push you know  
mackerman: “doing it”? really? are you ten?  
mackerman: i’m ace and i’m more comfortable talking about sex than you are  
jkirschtein: shutup  
sbraus: ace?  
mackerman: hence why i have created this chat  
mackerman: ace=asexual  
sbraus: oh  
sbraus: what is your bet mikasa?  
mackerman: $50 sunday after drag ball  
cspringer: wel shit  
sbraus: really?  
jkirschtein: can’t tell if you’re brave or full of yourself  
jkirschtein: hey armin’s online  
mackerman: i’ll add armin hold on  
jkirschtein: wait  
mackerman: ?  
jkirschtein: is something going on with armin?  
jkirschtein: he seems kind a off  
sbraus: yeah i’m really worried about him too. i hope he’s okay  
jkirschtein: between the ignoring us thing and the weird looks he gives us  
jkirschtein: he’s all over the place  
cspringer: he didnt even laugh @ me stickn chopsticx up my nose  
cspringer: th@ ALWAYS cheer people up  
jkirschtein: yea really. i thought you or eren would know so.  
mackerman: it’s not really my place to talk about it  
jkirschtein: well i hope he starts doing better soon  
mackerman: i’m sure armin will come out with it eventually but i can’t talk about it. sorry.  
sbraus: it’s okay, we’ll just show him we love him extra much!  
cspringer: dont choke him sash remember we only met him a few weeks ago  
jkirschtein: oh.  
jkirschtein: ok  
sbraus: i’ll add armin now  
mackerman: wait  
_*** aarlert was added to ars104_  
cspringer: hey armin my man u want 2 place a bet on when eren and levi will d0 the d0?  
cspringer: mika y did u facepalm  
aarlert: no, not really  
mackerman: reasons  
aarlert: i’m trying to pay attention  
mackerman: and don’t ever call me mika again  
cspringer: noted  
sbraus: hey armin your sweater is super cute  
aarlert: thanks  
jkirschtein: want to add reiner? if we explain what’s going on he’ll prob make a bet  
aarlert: guys seriously stop  
cspringer: aw its all in good fun  
mackerman: actually i was going to move on to a different topic but thank you connie for not letting me do that  
cspringer: u shoud hav made urself more clear  
sbraus: connie stop with the chatspeak it is no longer 2009  
cspringer: ...but we in a chatroom  
jkirschtein: reiner doesn’t want to make a bet but he think’s they’ll do it once and then crash and burn  
cspringer: he would  
aarlert: you guys are being really rude  
cspringer: :P  
sbraus: smileys? you have hit a new low  
aarlert: not just to shadis (pay attention!) but also to eren and levi, they deserve better than this  
mackerman: armin’s right  
cspringer: u started it  
mackerman: yeah and now i realise that was a bad idea  
jkirschtein: you just don’t want to lost  
jkirschtein: *lose  
sbraus: armin! betrayal!  
cspringer: gdi man whyd u show eren  
_*** mackerman has left the chat_  
aarlert: i told you to stop  
_*** aarlert has left the chat_  
sbraus: well i think we fucked up  
cspringer: what gives u that idea  
jkirschtein: i feel bad now too  
jkirschtein: like would you want people making bets on your love life? i wouldn’t  
sbraus: no you’re right  
cspringer: i would! shows u support me  
_***sbraus has left the chat_  
_*** jkirschtein has left the chat_  
cspringer: balls  
_*** cspringer has left the chat_

\---

At the end of class, Mikasa reached out to Armin with a hand on her arm, and called Eren’s name. “Hey, I’m sorry. That was fucked up of me.”

“It really was,” Eren said. “Yesterday you asked if Armin and I had started dating, today you’re making bets on when I’m going to sleep with Levi… What’s next?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Taking donations for the Armin Arlert Boyfriend Fund?”

“Eren, it’s not that big a deal…” Armin tried to hold him back, but Eren kept going. 

“I know you’re my sister and one of Armin’s best friends in the world but that doesn’t make it okay for you to try and take control of our lives like that. You need to learn when it’s time to back off.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just want to see you guys happy.”

“You’ve been going about it the wrong way.” Eren turned away, shoving his tiny laptop into his backpack. 

Armin looked down at her own bag and quietly addressed Mikasa. “He’s right. I mean, I accept your apology, and I think he does, too, but sometimes you can get kind of… overprotective. Or, um. Over-involved.” She picked up her backpack. “See you tonight.”

“What about lunch?” Mikasa asked. 

Armin shook her head. “Eren wants to practice for the audition, and I said I’d be his audience.”

Mikasa wanted to ask if she could join, but she still had to finish transcribing a song for her afternoon class and it would take all of the next two hours. It hurt a little, though; why wouldn’t Eren have asked Mikasa? She was the musician in their group. “Oh. Okay. See you tonight.”

Eren and Armin made their way out of the lecture hall, and Sasha came up behind Mikasa. “Hello.”

“Hey.” Mikasa turned her head, only able to meet Sasha’s eyes for a moment before she flicked them back to the ground. She twisted the strap of her backpack around her hand. 

“You were right; we really shouldn’t have done that. Jean backed out, too. Connie’s still kind of… well, he’s Connie. He’ll get it eventually.”

Mikasa offered her a sorry little smirk. “I really hurt them.”

“Hey, come on…” Sasha threw an arm around Mikasa’s shoulders and squeezed her. “You guys all love each other.”

“That doesn’t fix what I did.”

“No, it doesn’t, but because you love each other I know you’re going to do whatever it takes to make it better. So are we. That’s what friends do, you know?”

“Yeah.” Mikasa looked up, giving Sasha a rare smile. “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing!”

“Hey, Sasha!” Connie called out. “Hurry up, or I’m gonna start a betting pool on you two.”

Sasha and Mikasa turned at the same time to glare at him, arms still around each other. 

\---

Mikasa made a quick dash up to her room to grab a few tupperwares for herself and for Sasha, who had asked to come along once she found out Mikasa would be working through lunch. They grabbed food from the dining hall that connected Shiga and Shina houses and headed for Rose Hall, the music building. 

Sasha had reading to do for Intro to Nutrition, so she curled up in an armchair in the student lounge while Mikasa took the couch, bent low over her laptop with her headphones on. She stole glances at Mikasa while she worked, and when Sasha finally made it through the short article and its questions, she kept her laptop open and propped it up on her raised knees. After checking to make sure no-one was behind her, she switched to the tab she’d been staring at in the back of the Anatomy for the Artist lecture, after she’d dropped out of the chat. 

The website’s design was a calming purple and off-white, clean and easily readable, but as soon as Sasha had gotten halfway down the home page, her heart had started beating a mile a minute. She glanced at Mikasa once more, but the music major was still immersed in her assignment, and Sasha took another look at her own laptop screen. 

She finally worked up the nerve to head to the FAQ page, and she scanned through the questions. The third one caught her eye, and she clicked on it. The answer wasn’t as in-depth as she would have hoped, and she scrolled back up toward the top, but stopped at a list of definitions. 

As Sasha read through the list, her face lit up. _That explains so much,_ she thought. 

“You okay?”

Mikasa’s voice startled Sasha, and she squeaked and flinched, nearly knocking her laptop to the ground. “Fine! I’m fine. There’s no problem.” She smiled, or tried to. 

“Are you sure? It looked like you were having a spiritual experience with your homework.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Sasha bookmarked the tab and closed it. _I’m definitely sure._

\---

Eren first tried singing “The Way You Make Me Feel”, and despite how much he enjoyed it, it was barely within his range and he couldn’t make it work any lower. At Armin’s suggestion, and after watching a pitched-down [cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDvWkm5WtiY) on YouTube, he tried “Wings”, but it wasn’t right, certainly not if he was auditioning for a show like Rocky Horror. 

It might have been a little selfish of her, but Armin just really wanted to hear Eren sing that song to her. Okay, it was a lot selfish; since the first time Armin had ever heard the song, she thought of it as hers and Eren’s. They’d been together since they were toddlers, even before the Jagers had adopted Mikasa, and while Armin and Eren loved her and each of them had a relationship with her that was equally, if differently, special, there was something between Armin and Eren that was unbreakable, almost untouchable, and, god, if only Armin could find the words to ask Eren if he felt it too. 

She then suggested he sing something by Queen, and after Eren’s initial freak-out that he could never live up to Freddie Mercury’s voice, he agreed to try “Don’t Stop Me Now”. 

After about ten run-throughs of the first two verses and the chorus, and Armin’s suggestions for improvement, Eren had to run to Illustration. They’d see each other in the evening, during their shared dining hall shift, and then they’d have two hours alone together in the studio before Mikasa joined them after her fencing practice. 

The promise of another night in the studio with Eren evoked in Armin’s mind memories of Eren’s frustrated groans whenever he did homework in the dorm. As effective as Armin’s headphones were at cancelling out any outside noise, she’d had to listen to him for weeks before she gave in and bought them in the first place, and those memories were more than enough to throw a deep flush onto her face. Now that they were doing their Anatomy for the Artist homework together once a week, Armin worked without headphones and had to listen to a constant stream of Eren’s Art Noises. 

How someone could sound so effortlessly sexual while feeling so frustrated, Armin would never know. 

She hoped the students she passed on her way to the library thought her face was red because of the cold; it was in the negative temperatures, normal for early February, and with a biting wind chill. But she still felt like there was something wrong with her. Eren was her best friend, and they trusted each other, but Armin was still blushing like a teenager over him, like she had some sort of crush on him. 

_Do I?_ she thought. _Shit, I really hope not. That would be awkward._

An hour later, Armin was deep in her Pre-Imperial African History homework when her phone buzzed in her pocket, heralding a text from Eren. 

_mikasa’s bday is next week. wanna surprise her with horn?_

Horn was a small teahouse in town, which boasted not only absolutely delicious tea, but small and reasonably priced tea meals that came with two equally delicious dishes. It was quickly becoming very popular, and for good reason. 

Armin responded, _none of us are free on monday. sunday afternoon?_ She hoped they’d be able to get a table; the teahouse was usually packed on weekends. _if we go around 3 there might be room._

After receiving Eren’s confirmation, Armin pocketed her phone again, but her concentration was broken. She leaned back in her chair, and the cord of her headphones reached its limit, pulling at her ears. Armin took them off and rested them around her neck, pausing the music. It was then that she was reminded of her earlier concerns -- Eren’s vocal frustration. 

Shit. 

She tried to invest her focus back in her homework, but it was no use; no matter how interesting Armin found African history (and she did find it pretty interesting), her sudden hard-on would not be ignored. 

“Sit down!” she whispered, directing her attention towards her cock. It was a mistake to pay it any mind; she felt the friction of denim against cotton against swollen skin as she tried to adjust her pants, and she bit her lip and threw her head back, forgetting her headphones were still around her neck. Her laptop skidded towards her on the desk of the private study room, clattering loudly against the faux wood. 

Armin jumped in her seat, then leaned forward and unplugged her headphones, trying to hold back a moan as her pants stretched over her erection again. The study rooms were reportedly sound proof, but Armin wasn’t sure she trusted the walls to really keep her own noise contained. 

She glanced at the door. Locked. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she made one last effort to turn herself off. Nothing came to mind; Armin couldn’t get away from the loop of Eren’s Sexiest Moans: The First Album, which steamrolled through her head and sent her heart racing. And how could she forget the time less than two months earlier when Eren, in the middle of studying for his fall semester finals (or rather, his final, singular), had straightened out his back, thrown his arms over his head, and let out a whine that Armin had felt in her very bones?

Even now, as she sunk down in her seat and pressed a hand to her crotch, the memory made her tremble. 

Her hips lifted off the chair and she fell back into it, free hand coming up to clamp over her mouth, trapping most of a pleasured moan in her throat. She still hummed behind her hand, and pressed down harder with the other one. 

Armin breathed in and out deeply through her nose; her next breath was a gasp, as she slowly unzipped her jeans. The zipper sent little vibrations through the thin fabric of her underwear. “Fuck,” she whispered, relishing the feeling. 

It embarrassed her that she was about to jack off in a study room in the library, to thoughts of her best friend going down on her. That was what she imagined as she pushed her pants and underwear down just enough to pull her cock out. As soon as her cold fingers wrapped around the hot flesh, she knew she was done for. 

She closed her eyes, and Armin envisioned Eren’s lips wrapping around her, slowly sucking her down little by little. Armin tried to imagine what it would feel like when she hit Eren’s throat, and wondered if he would keep going, try to swallow her cock, take it down past the opening of his throat… or would he pull back, not ready to test his gag reflex just yet, and wrap his hand around the base of her cock, stroking what he couldn’t fit in his mouth?

Tiny noises escaped Armin’s throat and muffled against the barricade of her hand against her lips, but they were nothing compared to the sounds she pretended she heard. 

Eren moaning around her cock, as if he couldn’t get enough. 

Eren’s lips and tongue smacking as he sucked. 

Eren calling her beautiful and licking slowly up the underside of her cock, leaving a wet kiss at the head. 

Eren breathing heavily through his nose, swollen lips stretched and pink and full. 

Eren whispering her name as he looked up at her from where he knelt between her spread legs and half under the desk, with those bright eyes staring into hers like they had the day before when Eren had his arms around her and she looked up and their noses brushed and he looked for all the world like he was about to kiss her. She realised belatedly that she really wouldn’t have minded if he had. 

Armin grabbed for the tissues on the desk; she was close. 

She felt like a box with its bottom fallen open, its contents spilling all over the floor, and Armin realised with a little bit of dread that, yeah, she might have a teeny tiny microscopic fucking _enormous_ crush on her best friend. 

Armin whispered Eren’s name, then gasped as her orgasm washed over her. 

The tissue didn’t exactly hold up well, but at least she didn’t get anything on her clothes or the floor. Armin wadded it up with a few more tissues and dropped it in the trashcan, thankful that every single one in the academic buildings was lined with plastic bags. She pulled her pants up, then stood and tried to get some hand sanitiser out of the dispenser by the door without using her hands; she ended up nudging the lever with an elbow. When her hands were relatively clean, Armin returned to the desk and tied up the trash bag tightly. She leaned back in the chair, heart still racing. 

She’d just masturbated in the library. If only it had been planned, and not one of the most awkward experiences of her life, Armin might have been able to turn this into the kind of story one told at parties to impress drunk friends. As it was, she was mortified. 

And how the fuck was she going to spend two whole hours alone with Eren after _this_? To hell with that; how was she going to live with him? 

Armin’s cock gave a pitiful throb as images of how she and Eren could very enjoyably get through those trying times flashed in her mind’s eye, but _no_. Eren was head-over-heels for Levi, and even if he wasn’t, why the hell would he want Armin? Awkward Armin, nerdy Armin, barely-comfortable-with-being-trans Armin, just-masturbated-in-a-library Armin. His best friend, Armin. 

Oh fuck. Her best friend, Eren. 

Armin was still jittery when she got to her shift in the dining hall; Eren noticed and gave her a few worried looks but decided it might be better to wait until after work to ask. Besides, he was washing dishes, and she was replacing empty pans of food in the buffet with full ones, so they worked out of different ends of the kitchen and barely saw each other. 

It was only when Armin went to replace the clean plates that Eren got a chance to talk to her. He was leaning back against the sink, apron and rubber gloves still on; the dinner rush had ended, and Eren probably wouldn’t have much more to do before their shift was over. And Armin, well… Armin looked like she was about to fall over where she stood. 

“You okay?” Eren asked, while Armin picked up a stack of dry plates beside him. 

“I’m--” She started to say ‘fine’ but stopped herself. Eren would get more adamant after an answer like that, and she _really_ didn’t want him to know. “No. But I don’t want to talk about it.” She left, plates in hand, without another word. 

Armin stubbed her toe on the doorway out of the kitchen, and it didn’t hurt that much, but she was distracted and jumpy and ended up flinging herself away from it and into the inner edge of the door. Her back smacked against the door, followed by the back of her head, and it wasn’t until all the spots in her vision cleared that she realised she’d dropped the plates. 

Distantly, as if she was underwater, she heard Eren call her name, and she felt every eye in the room on her as everyone stopped talking, looking for the source of the crash. About a third of the plates had shattered, and they all fanned out sliding across the floor. The farthest plate, about ten feet away, still wobbled like a top, settling as Armin set her eyes on it. 

Her view of the plates was suddenly obscured by a dining hall apron and a boat-necked shirt. 

“Armin, are you alright?” Eren asked, frantic. His hands reached out to Armin’s shoulders. 

“‘M fine,” she mumbled, twisting out of his grip. “I’ll get the broom.”

Eren watched Armin go, feeling like it was somehow his fault. He moved out of her way as she came over with the broom and dustpan, and he started picking up the whole plates scattered across the floor, taking them to the kitchen to be re-washed, then brought another clean stack of plates out, setting them into the dispenser. Eren couldn’t shake the heightened alertness, the fear, the displaced feeling that he felt after a sound like that. It brought him back to the accident, even if broken dining hall plates sounded very little like shattering glass and crunching, twisting metal. 

The situation had passed, and so the students occupying the dining hall tables had gone back to their conversations and dinners. Eren envied them; they could just leave these things behind, but he, for all that the accident had done to his memory, had a hell of a time getting away from a reminder like that. 

And then there was the fact that it was Armin. Eren couldn’t lose her, any more than he could lose Mikasa, but he didn’t have to worry about his sister; she was strong, stronger than anyone he knew, and she could certainly take care of herself. Armin was strong too, but she didn’t know it or didn’t believe it, and after a lifetime spent with her, Eren couldn’t imagine his life without her. Losing his mom in the accident was hard enough; he couldn’t go through that again. And even if Armin had only dropped some plates, even if she was “fine” now, he still worried. 

Hell, he’d take a bullet for her if he had to, but he couldn’t do anything if he didn’t know where those bullets would come from. 

Armin came back into the dishwashing area and reached for another stack of plates, but Eren stopped her. “I handled it,” he said. “Come here.” He took her hand and led her out to the hallway behind the kitchens. It smelled vaguely of trash and heavily of disinfectant, but it was reasonably private, and they wouldn’t get yelled at for leaving work if they were this close. 

He held out his arms; Armin just about fell into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and fisting her hands in the back of his shirt, clinging to him. She shook a little, not in the way that suggested she was crying, but in the way that told Eren she was trying very, very hard not to. He rubbed her back and rested his chin on her head. “Hey, now… It’s okay. I know things have been hard on you. Let it out. You can talk to me.”

Armin leaned away from Eren, still embracing him, and looked him in the eye. “I masturbated in the library today,” she whispered. 

Eren couldn’t help the smile that stretched across his face. “You were freaked out about that?” He laughed. “You say that like no-one’s ever done it before. Were you in one of the private study rooms?”

Eren’s smile was nothing short of infectious, and Armin felt a tiny smile of her own creep forward; her lips twitched as conflicting emotions tried to take over control of her facial features. “Maybe.”

“Those rooms are great. Is that really all that you were freaking out about?”

“That’s part of it.” Armin leaned her head against Eren’s chest, turning her face to the side. She didn’t want her reactions to give her away. 

“Oh. Is it a…” Eren looked around at either end of the hall and then dropped his voice. “A thing. With the, you know, the thing.”

“Eren, you’re not making any sense.”

“The… you know, the Armin thing. The Armin thing I’m not supposed to tell anyone about.”

“You’re asking if it’s a trans thing.” Eren nodded; Armin couldn’t see him the way she was facing, but she felt it. “It’s… not, actually.” 

“Let me guess -- you were thinking about someone.”

Armin didn’t answer, but she supposed that was answer enough. 

“Aww, Armin has a crush!” Eren pushed at Armin’s shoulders until she was at arm’s length, and stared at her with a sudden intensity. “Who is he?”

Armin shook her head quickly, eyes wide. 

“Oh, come on! You know who I want to bang, it’s only fair!”

“ _Everyone_ knows who you want to bang. You’re about as subtle as a giant stomping through a crowded city.”

“ _Armiiiiiiiin!_ ”

“No!” Armin pushed her way out of Eren’s hold. “I’m not telling you!” She ran off back to the kitchen. 

“I’ll find out somehow!” Eren shouted. He chased after her -- not far, as the kitchen was only about fifteen feet away, and he grabbed her from behind, trapping her arms against her sides. Armin laughed aloud. “Gotcha!” Eren growled, his lips barely an inch from her ear. 

“Oh my god, Eren…” Armin tried to wriggle free, but Eren wouldn’t let her go, so she bent her knees and dropped herself down, hoping Eren would give up if he had to hold her up as well. 

“Fine, fine, I’ll let you go. Stand up first so you don’t hurt yourself.” 

One of the dining hall staff poked her head in and glared at them. “Stop fooling around. I’m about to do last call for dishes. Armin, get some gloves, you’re on dishes too.”

Someone turned on the small kitchen radio to Queen’s Greatest Hits, and the pair sang along loudly as they washed dishes -- loud enough that some of the other employees poked their heads in with the intention of telling them to get to work, but they worked diligently enough that no-one actually said anything. 

They didn’t even break in their singing, except for the one moment when Eren turned to Armin and said, “This song is so us!” and then continued singing. _Ooh, you make me live…_

Armin, still singing, nudged Eren with her shoulder. As the song ended, she said, “Next one’s all you.”

Eren was all too happy to blow her away with a well-practiced “Don’t Stop Me Now”, complete with a fair amount of hip wiggling, which was about the only dancing he could do when his hands were occupied. 

They finished their shift, and the last of the dishes, while “Somebody to Love” started, and after packing up and heading out they continued to half-sing, half-shout the lyrics as they made the trek over to the art building. 

“ _CAN ANY. BODY. FIND. MEEEEEE…_ ” They both took a deep breath and unconsciously drew closer, huddling for warmth at the edge of the crosswalk. “ _SOMEBODY TOOOOOOO LOOOOOOOVE?_ ” 

Before they could start on repeating the line for the end of the song, someone passing by smiled at them and said, “You two are adorable.”

“Thank you!” Eren shouted. 

Armin felt her cheeks burn, and her face prickled as its heat interacted with the cold air. “Eren, I think they thought we were together.”

“So? Not the first time.” Eren grabbed Armin’s hand and swung their arms back and forth between them. 

“What if Levi sees you?” Armin hissed. 

Eren shrugged, still swinging their linked hands. The crosswalk light turned, and he led Armin across the street. “I’m pretty sure at this point he knows I’m single.”

“You could be trying to cheat on me.”

Eren frowned; as soon as they reached the opposite sidewalk, he stopped and turned to Armin. “If I was dating you, I’d never cheat on you. Ever. Okay?”

Armin nodded. She wasn’t sure why it was so important that she knew this, but Eren looked serious so she took it to heart. “Thanks, I guess.”

“You deserve so much better than to have to worry about that.” He drew her forward in another hug. 

Armin mumbled into Eren’s shoulder. “This is why people think we’re dating.” Still, she appreciated it, and her little heart sang at how much Eren cared for her, so she returned the hug, not letting go of Eren until he drew his arms back. He took her hand again, once more directing them towards their destination. 

Eren swiped them into the building, and they climbed the stairs to the second floor, shoes covered in half-melted snow squeaking on the steps and the hallway floor. He took off his sweatshirt and dropped it over an empty upright drawing horse, then dragged two horizontal ones across the floor, angled and spaced such that he and Armin could draw each other. Armin unbuttoned her coat and draped it a little more carefully over a chair, then tied back her hair. 

“You should wear your hair like that more often.” 

Armin looked to Eren, who was staring at her with a hand partially covering his mouth. “I might,” she said. He smiled behind his hand. Eren was already seated at his drawing horse by the time Armin joined him with her materials; she straddled the seat and taped down her paper to the propped-up drawing board. 

As they drew each other, carefully observing each other’s bodies and faces, their eyes met more than once, and they tried not to laugh. 

Armin was still having trouble with just about everything; she’d started the class with no more skill than she’d had at five years old, and hand-eye co-ordination wasn’t one of her strong suits, so she struggled to draw Eren properly. Luckily for her, Eren’s need for perfection meant he worked just as slowly as she did. 

Every time their eyes met accidentally, Eren thought back to what he’d said at the crosswalk. 

_If I was dating you…_

It wasn’t a new idea. For years, people had assumed they were dating, and all throughout high school students had bullied them for their perceived Contagious Gayness. Maybe Eren would have seriously considered dating Armin back then had he a) not been so sure he was straight, b) not been so sure Armin was a boy, and c) not been caught up in the fact that they were best friends. They could, Eren now realised, be best friends _and_ lovers -- or whatever word fit best. 

But there was no point in dwelling on it. With Eren’s huge… whatever it was he was feeling for Levi, trying a relationship with Armin would just feel like cheating. 

A thought flew threw Eren’s mind -- _what if you could have both?_ \-- and he quickly caught that stray thought around its neck and stuffed it back into its tiny cage. That was _definitely_ cheating, and that’s why he’d said what he did to Armin. _I’d never cheat on you._

Still, sometimes he looked at Armin, and every second of his life he’d spent with her hit him all at once, and he had to honestly wonder why, when he said “I love you” to her, he meant it only in the manner of friendship, and not also as “I’m in love with you.” He very easily could be. He wondered, as his eyes caught Armin’s again, if she felt the same way. 

It took them a full two hours to finish their drawings. Eren had more work to do for Drawing 2, but he waited until Mikasa joined them so they could both draw Armin in the same pose. 

Mikasa. Eren hadn’t spoken to her since he and Armin left Anatomy. In the grand scheme of Eren’s fights with his sister, a day was nothing. Unlike Eren and Armin’s relatively short fights, Eren and Mikasa could go weeks without making up, but even so they still eventually worked things out. He’d forgiven her for the betting thing; she was obviously remorseful, and it wasn’t like he could stay mad at her forever. 

She came to the studio still sweaty from practice, but lingered by the door until Eren looked at her with half a smile. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. 

Eren nodded. “I know you are. Come draw.”

Armin turned to look at Mikasa, and she half-smiled as well. Even when there was a little strain between the three of them, they were always the Golden Trio. 

Even so, Mikasa felt like she was walking into pudding, the tension was that thick. It wasn’t even the tension surrounding her arrival and the memory of the betting pool she’d tried to set up earlier; it was something already there between Eren and Armin. She wondered if they had fought. 

Armin set up two chairs on the model stand, then sat in one and rested her foot on the other, making herself as comfortable as she could with a book in her lap. Eren set a timer for fifteen minutes; they would do their drawings in increments, with short breaks so Armin wouldn’t get sore from sitting in the same position for too long. 

During the first break, Eren marked Armin’s position with a few small pieces of tape on the chairs and stand, and then she took a walk down the hall to stretch out her stiff limbs. Mikasa thought it was as good a time as any to ask. 

“Did you two fight?”

“What? No,” Eren answered. “What makes you think that?”

“Tension.” She rubbed her hands together. Between the sweat and dirt she’d accumulated during practice, and the addition of charcoal all over her fingers, she felt disgusting; she didn’t need pudding-like tension adding to that. “I could feel it when I came in.”

“I don’t know why there would be tension. I mean, maybe Armin’s a little pissed I tried to figure out who she’s got a crush on? But I don’t think that’s it.”

“It may only take one person to start a fight, but it takes two to cause tension, Eren.”

Eren shrugged. “Then I don’t know. Maybe your Feelings Radar is a little off today.” 

“My ‘feelings radar’ is never wrong.” Mikasa was sure something was going on, even if Eren didn’t know it. And she had a feeling she already knew what it was.


	8. Blue Balls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Classes are taught. Apartments are visited. Musicals are auditioned for. Orgasms are faked. Films are viewed. Toast is thrown. Armin has the weirdest boner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i do read and appreciate all of your kind words, even if i sometimes don't respond. i’m just a dork writing about dorks being dorky, and i’m so happy some of you have found something to love in this fic. thank you! 
> 
> warnings: misgendering, faked orgasm. this chapter is over 10,000 words.

Back when Levi had taken Senior Painting, it had been a prestigious class, with only those Art majors who really and truly loved painting more than their very selves. Usually that meant they had achieved some higher-level soul experience and become one with their art, but in Levi’s case, it meant that the only thing he actually liked about himself in his final semester was his painting skill. Not the best way to go about life (in fact, it was one of the worst), but hey, it got him to graduation. As for what got him past graduation… well. He wasn’t just going to Erwin to monitor his OCD, after all. 

Topics classes, on the other hand, were split; half the students would be diligent, interested Art majors and minors, and the other half would be slightly less diligent non-majors filling up electives. Levi had taken two Topics courses, one on etching and one on ethnically diverse portraiture; both had been interesting, though only the latter was ultimately relevant to his line of work. 

Now, though, Levi found himself frustrated to hell and back with his Senior Painting class, in which many of his students were lazy and unmotivated, jaded after three and a half years of learning and convinced they knew as much as they could ever know. Those in his Topics in Hyperrealism class were, if less skilled in the topic itself, still far more open to learning even than he remembered even himself to have been. Not that they were all passing with flying colours; certainly Levi was still weeding out the weak, taking careful consideration for those few who he knew were not taking the class as seriously as he did. 

He wasn’t expecting anyone to think he was a _nice_ professor, anyway. Maybe he could be the professor with a sense of humour. He did, after all, stretch himself out on a drawing horse the first day of class, wearing his old Wall College hoodie, and pretend to be a student for the first half-hour of the first class meeting. That had been met with some laughter. 

But, at least Hyperrealism was a tolerable group of students who actually wanted to learn rather than just show off. 

On the first day of class, after his brief time playing the part of a student, and after going over the single-page syllabus, Levi made everyone shut their eyes and told them to hold up a hand if they didn’t want to see up-close-and-personal paintings of genitals; no-one raised a hand, so here Levi was, in the fourth week of class, giving his students a break from painting to show the class some of his own work. 

It had been a pain to carry over three large canvasses, but he’d just barely managed it with Hanji’s help. They weren’t too heavy for him, but they were unwieldy and hard to see around and really just too big to handle alone while weaving through crowded sidewalks at ten in the morning, and also trying to keep the sheet covering them in place to shield the content from the eyes of children and angry parents who insisted on sheltering said children from the reality that was human genitals. But hey, not Levi’s place to judge another’s parenting skills; it wasn’t like he had kids. And, yeah, maybe a four-foot-tall penis wasn’t something a child should be looking at. 

Another ten paintings, photographed before they’d been sent to museums or sold, he’d put chronologically in a presentation, along with a few process shots of Petra’s nipples, which were still not quite complete. 

He went through the presentation slowly, explaining the various processes that changed with each work, what they meant to him, and what he learned from them. At the end, he turned the lights on and uncovered the canvasses he’d brought along, inviting the students to look as far and as close as they wanted -- “But don’t you dare so much as think about touching them with your filthy hands, you hear?”

One student looked like she was thinking about making some smart remark, or touching the painting with some other part of her body (she stuck her tongue out with a contemplative look, and Levi bristled), but apparently thought better of it. There were rumours, not entirely unfounded, that Levi had been a criminal of some sort in his younger years; as a result, almost no-one was willing to fuck with him. Even the Senior Painting student who had shouted at him for forty-five minutes on Tuesday nearly shat himself when he saw Levi walking towards him out of class. 

Technically, Levi had participated in illegal activities, but there was a pretty big ethical difference between graffiti art and small theft and prostitution and cold-blooded serial murder, the last of which had not ever been part of his past, but was the intrigue of more than a few rumours. 

The same student who had possibly considered licking his paintings stepped away from the four-foot-tall penis, which had been painted lit from below by a teal light (Levi’s attempts at art-related humour extended to “blue balls” jokes and not very much else). She caught his eyes. “So what made you want to paint this sort of stuff?”

“You want an honest answer or a bullshit one?” 

She snorted. “I’m curious what the bullshit answer is, but I’m hoping for an honest one.”

“Shame, I had some good bullshit ready. I was a street-walker for almost two years.” Levi stared at her, face stoic as ever, waiting for her response. 

Another student whipped his head around and stared right back at Levi, slack-jawed. “Bullshit.”

Levi shook his head. “Not bullshit. I don’t recommend it, by the way. Whoring means unstable income, possibly dangerous customers, and, even worse, cops -- and that’s not even the half of it. I made it out alright but I wouldn’t go back to it. The only long-term bonuses I got out of it were a new meaning for ‘paint what you know’ and some damn good skill in the sack, but I could’ve gotten that if I’d been working at Starbucks like everyone else and just slept around for free.”

While Levi answered, he watched the student who had asked the question flush until her face resembled a tomato. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she flinched. “I’m not used to teachers being so open with their students,” she said. 

Levi pursed his lips, fully aware he looked even more like a pouting teenager than usual. “What college have _you_ been going to?” He hadn’t been away from Wall so long that its lively and involved professors had completely drawn into themselves, had he? 

“I’m a high school student, actually.”

He couldn’t help that his eyes went wide -- or, as wide as his heavy-lidded eyes ever went. “You might have wanted to mention that _before_ I brought in the giant blue penis.”

She shrugged. “Don’t worry about it; my parents are fans of yours, so I’ve seen a lot of this before -- not the blue penis, obviously, since you’ve never had that in a show and it’s not on your website, but I knew what to expect. Just, uh, I didn’t know anything about your… personal life.”

Levi didn’t respond, but his internal monologue went flying. Personal life? Hell, Lance Corporal was his past _professional_ life. His personal life is a mix of compulsive cleaning, batshit friends, eating instant noodles or takeout on his couch almost every night, and getting flustered -- Levi, getting _flustered_ , oh if his siblings could see him now -- for a certain bratty nineteen-year-old. 

A certain bratty nineteen-year-old who he’d just noticed was in the studio across the hall, and was also staring directly at him. 

\---

_Some damn good skill in the sack._

Eren hadn’t needed to hear that. 

He didn’t know Levi had a class across the hall when he set up his Drawing 2 homework in here, and he didn’t know Levi was going to leave the door open and give a presentation about his work, and he didn’t know he was going to have to listen to some absolutely filthy language drop from Levi’s mouth. Eren now knew exactly how every word he could think of to describe genitals would sound in Levi’s voice, and that would fill his sex dreams for years to come, he was sure. Most of all, though, he didn’t expect to hear Levi had been a prostitute, and he just about fell out of his chair when Levi went on to say what he’d learned from the experience; namely, how to do the sex with extra awesome. 

Some of Eren’s more far-reaching fantasies had suddenly become that much more possible. Maybe Levi was actually some sort of sex god -- not that it would have surprised Eren, because really, _that body_ , but to hear it from the man himself? 

Eren really, really hoped it wasn’t all talk. 

He stared across the hall, his homework forgotten, and just gaped at Levi. He was getting way too hopeful. He wished for him to be the true god of sex in the flesh and there was still no chance he’d ever get to fuck him.

Levi’s eyes suddenly met Eren’s, and Eren sucked in a deep breath through his nose, hoping it wasn’t nearly as audible across the hall as it had been to his own ears. The tensing of his body and the straightening of his back, however, were definitely visible, and Eren swore he saw Levi’s mouth twitch into a smirk for the tiniest moment. Levi’s gaze was heated, and continuous; he stared at Eren even as he answered more questions from his students, and Eren burned under the sweep of his eyes. Also, he burned under the sudden rush of blood to his cheeks. 

The worst part was, Eren couldn’t tear his eyes away from Levi, either. They were stuck in a staring contest, and Eren felt like his eyes were locked in place. 

Levi knew Eren had heard him. Eren knew Levi knew Eren had heard him. Eren wondered if the class knew Eren had heard him, or if they were all still staring at the Giant Blue Penis that Eren had just heard about. 

Eventually, something in Levi’s studio classroom drew his attention away from Eren, who breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to his nearly completed drawing. His relief was short-lived, though, as Eren noticed the students filing out of the classroom a half hour later. 

Levi’s class was over. That meant Levi could come in at any moment with those fucking bedroom eyes and that voice that seemed to invade his mind and curl around a million secrets it could expose at any time, and he could make some comment that would sound far too _interested_ for Eren to be hearing him right, or crack some dry joke about shit and Eren wouldn’t know whether or not he was allowed to laugh. 

“Jager!” Levi called out across the hall. “If you’re done with your homework, come help me.”

Eren looked down at his drawing, completely finished but covered in eraser shavings. He dusted it off and shoved it into his shelf, barely remembering to grab his bag before he rushed across the hall. 

Levi gestured at the three huge paintings propped up against the wall. “Could’ve used your help this morning when I was carrying them in; my friend was almost no help.”

“I’d have thought you were strong enough to do it on your own.” Eren tried for a cheeky smile, but he expected he just looked a little nauseous. He _felt_ a little nauseous. 

“I am, but the paintings are huge and I can’t see around them. We almost decapitated a few people when we brought these over.” Levi could tell he was losing Eren’s attention; he knew his paintings were distracting, so he shrugged and crossed the room to get the sheet and rope he’d used to cover the works on the way over. “Have a look if you want.”

Permission granted, Eren turned his attention fully to the three paintings. There was the blue penis he’d heard about; it stood proud and almost fully erect, taking up nearly all of the four-foot-high canvas. Even with the harsh teal lighting Levi had chosen, he’d still painted individual veins running through the skin, and each wrinkle and fold was marked with such accuracy that Eren felt that if he touched the canvas, he’d feel human skin against his fingers. 

He didn’t realise he’d stepped closer until the individual brush strokes started to become visible; despite how delicate it had all looked from far away, up close Eren could see the paint was thick, and only managed not to reflect irregular highlights from the overhead lamps because it had all been covered in a clear, matte finish. 

“Don’t touch,” Levi warned. 

“I know,” Eren mumbled. He stepped back to take a look at the other paintings. To the right of the blue penis was a portrait of curved hips and thick thighs, centred at the curls of pubic hair. One of the subject’s hands was also in the image, throwing up a middle finger at the viewer. Eren stepped closer. This piece, while still as complex in detail as the penis, didn’t use thick swirls of paint concealed under matte; the paint here was thin, and smooth, and finished in a more reflective, shiny layer. 

“That was one of my first, as you can probably tell.” Levi was closer, standing almost directly behind Eren. He had a white sheet thrown over one shoulder. 

“I wasn’t sure. But, yeah, I can see it now. You took less risks here.”

“It’s not all about risk-taking. I hadn’t yet developed a lot of the skills I’m known for now. Also, I was still a fucking baby and didn’t want to do an in-your-face vagina.”

“Oh. Is that elvish?” Eren pointed at the white tattoo curving over the subject’s hip and across to the crease of her opposite thigh. He could’ve sworn he’d seen the language in a movie, and that was the first conlang that came to mind. 

“Vulcan. She also got her ears surgically pointed.” 

“That’s some dedication.” 

Levi looked up, blinking quickly to stop himself from rolling his eyes. “Sure. Listen, I don’t mean to rush you, but I have to get these back, and I only moved my office hours to one hour later than usual.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Eren took a quick look at the last painting, but from the first glance he knew why Levi tried to rush him. “This is you.”

“Hm.”

It was Levi’s chest; a little less defined than when Eren had seen him in all his glory a few weeks prior, but the two scars, twin lines each a few inches long, below his right collarbone gave it away. The thicker scar to the side of his right nipple wasn’t there, and Eren assumed it was newer. Levi’s right hand covered his heart, as if he was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance; the skin on his fingers, especially around his nails, was littered with tiny, half-healed cuts, ones that looked similar to those Levi still sported. Eren checked his hands; yup, still there. 

Levi flexed and curled his fingers, forming a fist, then opened his hand again and stuck it in the pocket of his white jeans. “From cleaning,” he explained, but didn’t go into detail. 

“Wouldn’t have pegged you as a self-portrait kind of guy.”

“Oh, bullshit. I’m vain and pretty; people do self-portraits for less convincing reasons.”

“Can’t argue with you there.”

Levi stepped forward, tossing the sheet over Eren. “Flirting and insulting at the same time. Impressive.”

Eren scrambled a little under the sheet, then lifted the part hanging over his face. He smiled, and Levi’s inner monologue threw sickeningly sweet sunshine metaphors at him. “Really?”

“No.” 

Eren’s face fell. 

“ _Impressive_ is what I say when I’m annoyed.”

“Yeah, and when you’re impressed you say _not bad_. I know. You’ve said it to me; twice, actually.”

Levi actually did roll his eyes that time. “Don’t sound so proud of yourself. Help me wrap these up and we’ll get going.” He took a corner of the sheet and dragged it off Eren’s head, stifling a laugh at the way Eren’s hair stuck up with static. Eren frantically tried to pat it down, then helped Levi move the canvasses as gently as possible, stacking them against the wall. Each painting had a thick piece of cotton fabric on the back, padding each corner. They covered them with the sheet, then tied them together with the rope. Eren held the ropes tight while Levi employed some sort of magical, super-secure knot. 

“Hold it from the canvas frames, not the rope,” Levi instructed. “If you put uneven pressure on the frame, it could break, and then the paintings will be fucked beyond any chance of rescue.”

They hefted the canvasses of the floor, and Levi turned around, holding them behind his back, so he could walk in front without going backwards. Once out the studio door, he turned towards the stairs. 

Eren followed, but called out to him in confusion: “Weren’t we taking these to your office?” It was down the hall and around the corner, on the same floor as the studio classrooms. 

“Um, no. We’re taking them to my apartment. Didn’t I say that?”

“You might have? I don’t have a great memory.” Eren almost regretted even mentioning it; his memory issues were one of the few things he was self-conscious about.

“Well, if you have things you need to do, I’m sure I can find someone else.”

“No, it’s fine!” Eren nearly shouted. His voice echoed as he entered the stairwell. He was going to Levi’s apartment. _He was going to Levi’s apartment._ “I don’t have anything to do until dinner, honestly.” Fuck, that made him sound like a loser. Wait, he had something to do that night, right? “I mean, there’s auditions after that, but until then -- what I’m saying is, I’m happy to help,” he finished. Eren was glad Levi faced away from him; his face was burning up again, and he could feel himself starting to sweat, even under his light sweatshirt in the cold stairwell. 

Levi spared Eren the mocking his lips twitched to give in response to his brief rambling, instead focussing on one thing he’d said. “Auditions?”

“For Rocky Horror. My sister’s making me do it with her.”

“Oh, that brings back memories. Though, when I was here, the show was around Halloween. Careful,” Levi warned as they entered the turn halfway down the stairwell. 

“There’s a group in town that does it then. From what I heard, the Wall show moved to the spring so they wouldn’t have conflicting performances. Hold on, my end’s slipping.” They stopped, and Eren adjusted his grip on the paintings. “There has got to be a better way to transport these.”

“There is, but that would involve a car, which neither I nor anyone I regularly communicate with owns. You don’t happen to have one, do you?”

“Nope. Don’t even have a license.”

Levi took the last step to the ground floor, then started turning slightly, hoping they could manage a miracle and get the paintings through the cramped landing a second time. “What self-respecting nineteen-year-old doesn’t have a driver’s license?”

Eren didn’t answer. He had a reason, but it didn’t feel like the time to bring up his mother’s death or his fear of cars. 

Luckily, Levi was protective enough of his work that he was incredibly careful crossing streets, only willing to do so when the walk signal was on and the road was completely clear. The post-work rush was still a few hours away, but students without Friday classes were beginning their weekends, and the pair dodged groups of half-attentive young adults as they made their way slowly into town. 

Once the first shops appeared, Levi turned down an emptier side street, and after a block, turned again into a street parallel to the main one. 

“That wasn’t so bad,” Eren said. Though the paintings and his bag weren’t heavy and they were moving slow, the stress of carrying pieces of art that were worth more than his tuition through crowds of uncaring pedestrians was enough to put him out of breath. The ever-nearing reality that he was going to Levi’s apartment was also a significant cause of nervousness; a bead of sweat trickled down the back of his neck. 

“This morning was much worse. The streets were emptier, but Hanji’s fucking ridiculous and kept telling me to go faster and bumping into the paintings. We’re here.”

Levi stopped in front of a three-story building. All the windows Eren could see had plants growing in garden boxes. Ivy clung to the outer walls almost all the way up to the top, like in Sina Quad at Wall, and in the few gaps between the leaves Eren could see the dark brick behind it. 

“Did you live in Sina?” Eren asked. 

“Yeah. Mitras House. Managed to get the same huge-ass room both years, too; there’s not much demand for the ones that are half-underground.” Levi set his end of the paintings down on the bottom step in front of the building, keeping hold with one hand while the other fished around in his pocket for his keys. 

“Both years?”

Levi unlocked the door and pushed it open wide, pocketing his key and picking up the paintings once more. “I was only here for two years; summers, too. A year of community college near where I used to live before that. It was hell, and their art program was shit.”

“I considered going to community college when everywhere else I applied to rejected me. The one by my house doesn’t even have art, though. And then I got into Wall and the financial aid worked out, so I get to do what I love.”

Levi clicked his tongue. “Aww, cute. Steps are narrower here, watch out.” he started climbing, lifting his end of the paintings a little more so they wouldn’t knock against the steps. 

“How did you end up paying for Wall? I mean, I know you were an orphan, so.” Eren immediately wished he hadn’t said anything. 

Looking over his shoulder, Levi caught Eren’s look of regret before he turned his face down. “I didn’t go whoring until after college, if that’s what you’re trying to ask.” 

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I got an assload of financial aid too. Turn’s coming up.”

Eren was silent the rest of the way up to Levi’s third-floor apartment. Once they were inside and the paintings had been propped against a clear wall, Eren took a look around. 

The apartment was immaculately clean, all white walls that he could see, black-and-white furniture and square corners all over. The only color came from the deep blue throw pillows on the couch, and the books in the shelves built into the front-facing wall. 

And, of course, the paintings. 

The regular furnishings of an apartment’s front room -- couch, coffee table, TV -- were all within a few feet of the street-facing windows, and the rest of the spacious front room was taken up by Levi’s work. The floor was concrete, rather than carpet, and was sealed; a few flecks of paint, mostly pale nude and pink, were drying or dried on the centre of the workspace floor. Paintings were propped up against all of Levi’s walls, and all but the bundle of three they’d just brought in were uncovered. Eren got the feeling he had just entered some sort of sex dungeon, except that the wide windows, covered by thin drapes, let in enough light to make the room comforting. It wasn’t a sex dungeon; it was a calming sex living room. 

“Doesn’t the light fade your paint?” Eren asked. It was the only question that came to mind that he thought was worth voicing. 

“The windows face north, so there’s no direct sunlight; I have UV-treated windows; I don’t put anything in this room where the light will hit it until it’s completely dry and varnished. I mean, eventually, yeah, they’ll fade, but I’m trying my best to keep it from happening. I’d rather they fade an unnoticeable amount than hide them away.”

“Oh.” Eren cleared his throat. “Well, I guess I should get going back.”

“You can stay for a while if you want.” _Bad idea bad idea bad idea--_ Levi really needed to get a leash for his damn inner monologue; it was starting to escape. 

“Okay.” Eren looked around at the room again, a little overwhelmed by the fifteen or so portraits, mostly of genitals but all of some part of the nude form, everywhere he looked. 

“You don’t have to.”

“No, I want to! I mean, if that’s okay with you.”

“It’s fine with me.”

“Fine!”

“Fine.”

Eren snorted and threw a hand over his eyes while he laughed. He missed Levi’s smirk; he was missing a lot of Levi’s smirks lately. Then again, Levi was smiling a lot, and only when no-one was looking, but it was always around Eren. 

“Dork.” Levi schooled his face back into impassivity as Eren started to look up. “Do you want anything to drink?”

“Uh. Water?”

“Mm-hm. Take off your shoes. Have a seat. Don’t jack off on my paintings.”

Eren had started taking off his sneakers, and he hopped around on one foot, completely undignified, as he bristled at Levi’s last remark. “I wasn’t going to!”

“I know, I just like fucking with you.” Levi filled a glass with water, and almost let it run over when he felt heat prickled against his neck. Eren was watching him. He looked over; yeah, Eren was definitely watching him, staring with heat blazing in his eyes, like Levi had said something about fucking him -- oh. He had. “Shit. I didn’t mean. Stop looking at me like that, I’m not going to fuck you.”

Eren looked away, but the heat was still in his eyes. “Sorry.”

“Fuck. No. Don’t apologise. You know what? I’m sorry.” Levi turned off the tap and set the glass on his counter, absently rubbing a smudge with his thumb. “I shouldn’t have even brought you here. I’m a dick. I keep fucking teasing you, even when I know how you feel about me. I don’t even know why I’m doing this.” Lie. He knew why. He rubbed harder at the half-imagined smudge, which was spreading under his oily fingers. Fuck, he needed to wash his hands. “I’m not going to do anything to you, I swear.” Lie. He knew he’d eventually fuck Eren senseless; it was only a matter of when, of before or after the semester ended, of before or after Levi was done teaching, of before or after Eren would graduate three and a half years away. “You can go.” Please don’t go. 

“Levi.” 

Levi jumped; Eren was suddenly right behind him. Eren’s hand covered his on the glass, stilling his restless fingers. The touch burned, and Levi absently wondered if Eren had a fever, because his hands were _so warm_ , but he turned his head to look over his shoulder and Eren’s bright eyes were right there and all his thoughts flew out of his head, save for one: _I am so fucked._

“I want to stay, if you want me here.” Eren glanced at their hands around the glass; his fingers fit into the spaces between Levi’s. “And, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you want me here.”

Eren’s heart hammered in his chest, and he wondered if Levi could feel his pulse thrumming through his hand; he didn’t know Levi couldn’t feel it at all, because his heart was beating just as fast. 

Levi could deny it -- should deny it. He should tell Eren to leave, should stop talking to him, should stop encouraging him, should never look at him again. But fuck him, he didn’t want to. 

Those bright eyes looked back into Levi’s, searching for an answer; Levi didn’t give one, but his eyes were wide, and he stared right back at Eren, daring him to do something. Do anything. 

Then Eren’s eyes were coming closer, and closing, and he stopped a breath away. Levi heard the little breath Eren took, heard him shift his socked feet just an inch closer, even heard the tiny click of his tongue in the apartment’s still silence as he licked his lips, and the phrase _we can’t_ flared in Levi’s mind, but he pushed it aside, pushed everything aside, and twisted the rest of his body, throwing his free arm around Eren’s neck and pulling him the rest of the way in. 

Their lips met, and Levi let out an undignified and truly pitiful noise. He thought he knew how much he’d wanted this, but he had no clue until this moment. Eren’s hand left his to tangle in his hair, his little finger resting on his undercut and letting a drop of cold condensation from the glass trickle through the short fuzz there. Levi let go of the glass, turning fully and fisting that hand in Eren’s shirt and pulling Eren against him and backing up into the sink. Eren rested his free hand on the lip of the sink, and once he caught his balance, stepping his foot between Levi’s ( _you little shit you are this close to me humping your leg like a fucking teenager_ ), he brought that hand up and slid his arm around Levi’s back. 

Levi felt like he was on fire at every point where Eren touched him, the hottest inferno at his lips, sending sparks through them and turning them numb, and he leaned his head to the side, slipping his tongue into Eren’s mouth to try and get some feeling back. 

He breathed in sharply through his nose -- there was the fire again -- and heard Eren do the same. 

Eren’s fingers left Levi’s hair, and a moment later the arm left his back, and Levi’s heart skipped a beat because he did not want Eren to pull away so soon, he didn’t want Eren to pull away ever, but then those hands were on his ass and lifted him up and Eren spun slightly to his left, depositing Levi on the empty counter. Levi immediately spread his legs and pulled Eren in again, and then his fingers were tilting Eren’s jaw up so they could lock lips again. Levi was above Eren, finally, and just enough that he controlled their kiss, and Eren followed whatever he did, hands on Levi’s hips and pulling him closer bit by bit until Levi’s ass was at the very edge of the counter and there was a new fire growing at the front of his pants where he pressed into Eren’s stomach, and he had to break away. 

“I can’t fuck you.”

Eren whined and dropped his head to Levi’s shoulder. 

“I have office hours soon, for one, and also _I am a professor_ \--”

“Not my professor,” Eren mumbled. 

“I am getting paid to attend and help facilitate a class that you are taking. I shouldn’t even be kissing you.” Levi’s thoughts caught up to him, and he hated them, but he couldn’t deny them. He’d given in to his own desire, but there was still morality to be considered. 

“I read the student and employee handbooks. So long as you’re not in control of my grades…”

“I don’t care what the damn handbooks say. I’m drawing a line.” Levi felt Eren sigh against him, and his resolve broke a little. “At least, for now.” 

Eren picked his head up, and his bright eyes were wide, and a grin crept across his face. “For now?”

Levi looked to his left, to the glass of water left forgotten, dripping condensation on his pristine black kitchen counter. “Don’t push me. It’s still unethical.”

“Some would say prostitution is unethical.”

Levi knocked his knuckles lightly against the side of Eren’s head. “Yeah, well, I got over that moral crisis years ago. I still have to get through this one. Just, don’t…” Don’t what? Don’t leave me? No. He couldn’t ask that; he wouldn’t ask that. He didn’t even want to ask that. More like-- “Don’t wait for me. If there’s someone else, somewhere down the line, go for it.”

Eren’s grin flickered, and when it came back it looked just a little forced. 

“Is there someone else?”

“No. Well, not exactly. I don’t know. There could be, I guess, but I don’t really…”

Levi nodded. “You don’t know how you feel about them. Well, if you figure it out, and you want them, go for it.”

“What if I want you more?”

Levi sighed, and he played with Eren’s hair, twirling a few strands between his fingers. He still had one arm around Eren’s neck, draped over his shoulders. “Well, then you have to decide for yourself what the right thing to do is. Do you go be happy with someone else, or do you wait for me on the chance I’ll ever actually throw away my reservations? Whatever you decide…” He sighed again, because he didn’t think he’d have to break out his mantra so soon. “Whatever you decide, make sure it’s a choice you won’t regret. Don’t waver on it; make your decision, and stick to it.”

“Yeah. I will.” Eren bit his lip, then glanced at Levi’s. “Can I kiss you again?”

Levi couldn’t help the tiny exhalation, almost a laugh, that left him in a rush, turning the corners of his lips. He looked at the clock. “There’s still a little time before I have to be back. But once we leave, that’s it.” 

Eren’s eyes travelled over his face, and his lips twitched. “You’re smiling.”

“So I am. Brat.” 

Eren’s grin returned in full force, and he tugged Levi down to him once more. 

\---

Eren raced up the stairs, down the hall, and into his dorm room, slamming the door shut with the full force of his body falling back against it. He slid down to the floor. 

He’d spent about fifteen minutes total kissing Levi, which wasn’t much, and felt like even less, far too short, who the hell came up with the idea to give Levi an office to have hours in anyway? Fuck that person. He’d then walked back to campus with Levi, and might have mentioned that he wished he could hold Levi’s hand. Levi had looked at him like he had grown a second and third head, but also with a touch of fondness, and Eren was still reeling from their kisses and Levi’s tiny smile and he’d nearly melted on the spot. How Levi could turn him into mush with no more than a look was beyond Eren, but it thrilled him. 

Levi was, of course, late to his office hours. Not by much, but he’d been irritated when he looked at his watch outside the museum and found himself already five minutes late. He’d left Eren with a hand on his shoulder, though, and a soft look, so Eren supposed Levi wasn’t too mad at him. 

He leaned his head back against the door, a grin threatening to split his face in two (at the very least, his cheeks hurt), and he belatedly realised someone was calling his name. 

“Eren?” Armin’s voice broke through Eren’s thoughts. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m great.” In his haste and reminiscing, he hadn’t even noticed his roommate was in the room, let alone that she was calling him. 

“What… happened?” Armin sounded hesitant, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. 

Eren sucked in a deep breath, preparing to answer, but the words got stuck in his throat. This was Armin. Armin, the girl he wasn’t sure how he felt about, the girl Levi had told him to date if he ever figured out how he did feel. Should he really be bragging to her about this? 

But Armin was his best friend, and Armin was asking. 

“I kissed Levi.”

“Oh!” 

Eren’s eyes met Armin’s; her excitement had sounded a little too forced for Eren’s comfort. 

“Oh. Wow. That’s… that’s great, Eren. I’m happy for you.” Armin smiled. That, at least, looked real. 

“Thanks,” Eren said. 

\---

As soon as Eren sat down to dinner, he was accosted by his friends; apparently Marco had been visiting a friend in town when he saw Eren and Levi go into the same apartment building. Though he hadn’t personally witnessed any of Eren and Levi’s interactions before, he knew all about Eren’s massive raging leviathan boner (Connie’s words) for Levi, and was just as interested in the outcome as everyone who had seen them firsthand. 

“Nothing happened!” Eren tried to convince them, but Armin interrupted him. 

“Oh, something happened, all right.” She jerked her head to the side, clearing the hair that had gotten in her eyes.

“Armin!”

“Eren got kissed today.”

There was a chorus of “ooh!”s that gradually raised in pitch and volume until they were deafening, and Eren tried to say “See? Nothing!” but his friends didn’t hear him and they were having none of it anyway. 

It wasn’t until Mikasa banged her fist on the table that they shut up. “Guys. We talked about this.”

“We’re not making bets!” Sasha said. “We’re reacting to events that have already transpired. Isn’t that allowed?”

Mikasa looked to Eren for an answer; he just shrugged. “Go ahead, but it’s really not that big a deal.”

“Seemed like a big deal when you crashed into our room and nearly fainted,” Armin cut in. Eren glanced at her; her expression was stormy, and she poked at her dinner with more distaste than Shiga-and-Shina Dining Hall’s leftover mango chicken usually warranted. 

“What the hell crawled up your ass?” Eren asked. He immediately regretted it when Armin’s face fell. 

She stood up, pushing her plate towards Sasha. “I’m not hungry,” she said, and she left without another word. 

Eren stared at the spot Armin had just vacated, stunned; the others at the table were quiet, too, but Eren didn’t notice. He realised, at that moment, that he had a huge problem. 

Eren definitely liked Levi. Levi definitely liked Eren, but wasn’t yet willing to fuck him or date him, and even kissing him more was off-limits. Eren probably liked Armin; at the very least, he was incredibly devoted to her. After the way she’d stormed out, there was little doubt in Eren’s mind: Armin almost certainly liked Eren. 

And now, Armin was mad at Eren, and almost certainly hated Levi. 

\---

Armin slammed the door shut and immediately spouted every curse he could think of in all three of the languages in which he knew how to swear. 

He kicked the frame of Eren’s bed, and for a moment considered taking a piss in it, but that was juvenile and also disgusting, and he didn’t want to deal with the smell or the possibility of retaliation. 

Fuck. Armin didn’t think of himself as a jealous person -- well, okay, Armin was definitely a jealous person, but not like this. Armin didn’t storm out of dinner. Armin didn’t kick beds. Armin didn’t shout obscenities to empty dorm rooms. That was all Eren’s style, and wasn’t it fitting that Armin was getting himself all worked up of Eren the same way Eren got worked up over whatever it was that pissed him off? 

Armin threw himself onto Eren’s bed, grabbing his best friend’s pillow and shoving his nose into it, taking a deep, calming breath full of Eren’s scent. Some people might think it was creepy that he found comfort in Eren’s smell, but after years of sneaking into each others’ houses and cuddling the nightmares away, and years of trading pillows when they knew they couldn’t get away with sneaking out, it wasn’t weird for either of them to just drop into each others’ beds and take a whiff of a pillow to calm down. It wasn’t as good as having the real Eren to hold him, but Armin was too pissed off to be around him. 

He’d only known for, what, a day? that his feelings for Eren strayed into the romantic, and he was getting jealous over a man he’d already known Eren liked. Maybe it was that Armin hadn’t expected Levi to ever give in to his own obvious returned attraction to Eren, or at least hadn’t been prepared for it to happen so soon, but the news was still a punch to the face. 

But, hell, would Eren have even liked Armin anyway? If Levi wasn’t around, would Eren have looked at Armin and eventually seen something there, some little bit of romance that could blossom into something more? Would Eren have been able to look past the nerdy exterior and the dysphoria and the fact that Armin was a girl but so obviously didn’t look quite enough like one--

Armin cringed, and that cringe eventually led to her curling up in a ball, sobbing into Eren’s pillow, because through almost her whole rant she’d called herself a boy. Fuck, she couldn’t even get it right in her own head. 

She heard a soft knock on the door and shouted “Go away!” at it. 

“It’s Mikasa,” the door replied. “Please let me in.”

Armin stuck her head under Eren’s pillow, trying to muffle her sob, but Mikasa heard it; she tried the door, found it locked, and sighed. 

“Armin, unlock the door.”

“I said, go away!”

“I know what you said. But you’re hurting right now, and the guy who usually rubs your back and tells you it’s okay is part of the cause. I can go get his key, but I’d rather not ask him for any favours right now.” She paused, waiting for any noise that signalled Armin was going to open the door. “You don’t have to accept my help, but you’re not going to feel any better if you lock yourself up in your room.”

She heard rustling, and a few moments later Armin opened the door, stepping aside to let Mikasa in. As soon as she was inside, Mikasa put down Armin’s plate of half eaten dinner on the nearest surface, reached for Armin, and hugged her. 

“I’m not so great at the ‘comfort’ thing.”

“It’s okay,” Armin said. “It’s always been more Eren’s area than yours.”

“So, um. You like him.” Mikasa worried her lip between her teeth; relationship talk wasn’t really her thing either. 

“Yeah. I thought you already knew.”

“I did. I’ve known for years, but now you’ve figured it out, too.”

Armin pulled back to look questioningly at Mikasa. “When did you figure it out?”

“I went to wake Eren up one time in tenth grade, and you two were cuddling in his bed. I thought you’d stopped doing that years earlier.”

Armin laughed. “We did. That was the only time in high school.” And what a time it was. Armin had crawled out of her first-floor bedroom with no problems as usual, but the weather-worn garden arch under Eren’s window wouldn’t support her weight any longer; she’d thrown pebbles at Eren’s window to try and get his attention, and when Eren saw her puffy eyes and tear-stained face in the light of his back porch, he had gotten out his belaying rope and rock climbing harness and pulled Armin up the side of the house. 

She’d had a nightmare about her parents, her first in years. She thought she had grieved for them already; she thought she’d moved on. She was wrong. But Eren’s warmth had made it hurt just a little bit less. 

Mikasa started to pet Armin’s hair; it was hesitant and awkward, but Armin appreciated it, and she found it comforting all the same. “There’s no need to cry over him,” Mikasa said. “He likes you too.”

 _Yeah, okay_ , Armin thought. Not like that, certainly. “I wasn’t crying over him.”

“You ran up here because of him, didn’t you?” Mikasa asked. Armin nodded in affirmation. “Then why were you crying?”

“Same thing I always cry about these days.”

“Girly shit?”

Armin laughed, finally wiping at her eyes. “That’s one way to put it.” She sighed. “I can’t even remember to call myself a girl in my own head.”

Mikasa pulled Armin close again. “I wish I knew what to tell you.” 

“Sometimes I wish I knew someone else who’s trans. I mean, I know I can talk to your and Eren about it, but it would be nice to have someone who really understands.”

Mikasa hesitated. She could recommend someone, but she promised not to tell his secrets, not to anyone… but Armin was hurting. Armin was her priority in this case. “If I told you to talk to someone, would you trust me?”

“Who?”

“Jean.”

“He’s trans?!” Armin jumped back, her eyes wide with shock.

“Not exactly.” 

Armin deflated. 

“But he does know a little about what you’re going through, and if anyone we know can point you in the right direction to meet more people, it’s him.”

\---

Mikasa went back down to dinner after Armin had calmed down. She let Armin stay in her room for the time being, in case Eren came back up before Armin was ready to see him again. 

At a quarter to seven, Eren went up to his room to get his sweatshirt; when he came back down, he looked a little crestfallen. Mikasa didn’t say anything about it; she knew it was because Armin hadn’t been there. She matched Eren’s stride as they left Shiga and headed for the Performing Arts building on the other side of campus. 

Eren shivered; his sweatshirt, as usual, did little to keep him warm. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and breathed on them, then tucked them into his sleeves and threw his hood over his head. Mikasa, snug in a long coat she’d found at one of the thrift stores in town, unwound her scarf from around her neck. “Take this.” When Eren started to protest, she draped it over his shoulders for him. “Give it back to me later. And wear some warm clothes, for god’s sake.”

“It’s nearly spring,” he whined. 

“It’s still the beginning of February.”

“Exactly!”

Mikasa shook her head, just a little amused. “Whatever you say, little brother.”

Eren groaned. “I’m still a year older than you. That hasn’t changed.”

“I’ll be your age in a few days.”

“And at the end of March I’ll be a year older again. Either way, I’m not your little brother.”

They were among the first to arrive, and Mikasa signed up for the third audition slot; Eren took the fourth, and they sat down next to each other to fill out their forms. Name, school ID number, which nights they had free for rehearsal, the dreaded “why are you auditioning?”, and the bonus weird question: “What condiments do you prefer on your hot dogs?” to which they both replied “Use. A. Bit. Of. Mustard!”

On the back of the form was a short scene, and they both had different ones. They were to know, but not necessarily memorise, the lines for all of the parts, and they would be told during their audition which part they’d play. They could read off their sheets, but Eren and Mikasa both knew the whole script by heart, having watched the film together more times than they could count as it was one of the few they could agree on for their “sibling bonding nights”. Mikasa liked the music; Eren liked the debauchery; they both liked throwing things at the TV. 

They read over the scenes quickly, making sure they hadn’t forgotten anything since the last time they watched the movie over winter break. 

“I still can’t believe you’re making me do this,” Eren mumbled. 

“Are you really so afraid of wearing a maid outfit?”

“Yes! My legs are not made for that short of a skirt. I don’t want to be Rocky, either! What if my junk falls out of the damn speedo?”

Mikasa burst out laughing. “Don’t worry. You’ll look fine next to Jean’s chicken legs.”

“What if I have to kiss Jean?” Eren looked absolutely horrified at the idea.

“It’ll be okay. You’ll get through it, I promise.” She put a hand on his shoulder, trying to look convincingly sympathetic, but she collapsed into laughter again. 

The door to the audition room opened, and Reiner stepped out. He waved at Eren and Mikasa. “Bert! You’re up.”

They hadn’t noticed Bertholdt when they came in. As tall as he was, he managed to blend in well with his surroundings. He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants before entering the room. Reiner sat down on one of the empty couches to wait for his friend. 

Eren pointed at Reiner. “See, he’d make a good Rocky,” he said to Mikasa. “Just look at him!”

Reiner heard him, and he sprawled out on the couch, winking at Eren. “Should’ve known you liked me for my body, Jager.”

“Ew. No. I mean, uh, not my type.” 

“Oh, I know. You like ‘em short.” Reiner let out a booming laugh. Eren cringed, both at the sound and at the sudden reminder of the interesting afternoon he’d had. 

\---

Eren and Mikasa got back to their house around eight-thirty. Despite that they had Anatomy for the Artist at 9 the next morning, they wanted to watch _Rocky Horror_ for about the hundredth time. Even if they didn’t get into the show, and didn’t need the refresher, they hadn’t done a sibling bonding night in a while. They made a few slices of toast in the deserted dining hall, grabbed a newspaper from by the door, and stole a roll of toilet paper from the first floor bathroom. They had the rest of the props, including a plastic hot dog, in Mikasa’s room. 

“Maybe we could ask Armin if she wants to watch with us,” Eren suggested. His voice was quiet, as if he wasn’t sure whether to ask or not. 

“I’ll ask her. She’s been cooling off in my room.”

“She, uh. She has a thing for me, doesn’t she?”

“You should ask her that.”

“I might have a thing for her.” Eren still couldn’t be a hundred percent certain; not so soon after he’d first honestly entertained the idea. Maybe he was just confusing his incredibly close relationship with his best friend for something else. But he was pretty sure there was something romantic there, and if he was honest with himself, there had been for a long time. 

“I know. Why did you kiss Levi?” Mikasa leaned against the empty dining hall buffet counter. She wasn’t going to drag this conversation upstairs. 

“Heat of the moment, I guess. I wasn’t planning on it. I wasn’t going to do anything with either of them until I had a concrete decision in place. I’m still not going to -- Levi’s having a moral crisis over the fact that I’m a student, so that’s not even possible, and I couldn’t date Armin while I had… feelings for someone else. It would feel like cheating.”

“Well, at least you’re self-aware enough to know that. Don’t hurt Armin, obviously. But also, don’t hurt yourself.” She pushed off the buffet and led the way upstairs, Eren trailing behind with his head hung. “Go to your room,” she instructed, heading for her own door. “We’ll be over in a few.”

She opened her door; Armin was lying on the bed, typing away on her laptop. 

“Hey,” Mikasa greeted. She shrugged off her coat and closed the door behind her. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Armin replied. She closed her laptop. “Wrote, like, half a paper. And, I hope you don’t mind, but I kind of looked through your closet a little.”

“See anything you like?”

Armin shrugged. “There was one dress… black denim, with red trim. Maybe, when I’m out, do you think I could borrow it?”

“That one doesn’t actually fit me anymore. You can have it if you want. Are you okay enough to see Eren? He knows how you feel, obviously, but I don’t think he’s going to make it weird if you don’t.”

“I can do that.”

Mikasa crouched down, then slid under her bed on her belly to retrieve the box of props from where it was stowed against the wall. “We’re going to watch Rocky Horror. Want to join?”

Armin sat up. “Sure. I’ve never seen it before.” 

Mikasa hit her head on the bed frame in her haste to get up. When she extracted herself, after sneezing a few times on the dust bunnies, she stared wide-eyed at Armin. “You’ve never seen it?” Armin shook her head. “What kind of friends _are_ we?!” She stood up, shaking the dust out of her hair, then grabbed Armin’s hand. “This is perfect, Armin. To hell with Levi; I’m definitely rooting for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see. Come on.” She dragged Armin across the hall and barged into her and Eren’s room, kicking open the half open door. “You’ll never believe this. Armin’s never seen it.”

Eren say up, and his bright eyes went even brighter. “You’re joking.”

“No,” Armin said. “I didn’t even know it existed until you said you were trying out for the show. Is it really that good?” Armin sat down next to Eren on his bed; it was a peace offering, and also, despite herself, she still wanted to be close to Eren. 

He laughed. “No, it’s actually not that great. It’s just fun.” Eren snaked an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, by the way. For yelling at you. And the other thing.”

“Don’t apologise for kissing him. You like him, I get it. It’s fine. I’m sorry for storming off.”

“But--”

Mikasa cut him off. “No. We’re not going to fight over who’s more sorry. We’re gonna deflower Armin, and then we’re gonna watch the movie.” Mikasa put the DVD in, but left it on the loading screen, glancing at Eren. “You tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“You know. The ritual.”

“Oh!” Eren grinned. “There’s a tradition for Rocky Horror virgins. You have to fake an orgasm before we start.”

Armin went stiff as a board. “You’re not serious.”

“Look it up if you want. Technically it’s only for the live show, and usually they just pick one or two virgins from the audience, but we’re a little more evil than that.”

“Oh my god.” Armin buried her face in her hands, trying to hide how red her cheeks were turning. She’d just come to orgasm over thoughts of Eren in the library the day before; it would be all too easy to fake it here, but it didn’t make her any less embarrassed. 

“And don’t try and tell me you can’t because you’ve never orgasmed before,” Mikasa warned. “If I can fake it, so can you.”

“Oh my _god_ , you guys are so weird.” Armin picked her head up and brushed her hair out of her face. “Fine. I _have_ orgasmed before, by the way.” 

“Wait, you’re actually going to do it?” Eren asked, stunned. “Can I get a video of this?”

“Sure, just don’t let anyone else see it.” She closed her eyes and took a few breaths, then hummed softly, trying to get into some sort of headspace where she could make herself do it. If she was going to do this, she was going to make it worth it. Make it memorable. Make it stick in Eren’s forgetful mind the same way Levi did. She breathed in deep, humming once more, but for longer, punctuating it with a quiet “ah!” 

“She’s doing the whole thing,” Eren whispered. He whistled low, lifting his eyes from his phone to watch her directly. “Go Armin!”

Armin opened her eyes and met Eren’s. Even if she was a little embarrassed, she was being given a chance, even the tiniest one, to show Eren the could be sexy, could be desirable. She smirked and bit her lip, throwing her head back before releasing another cry, a little louder this time. She dropped her hands to the bed and curled them in the sheets between her legs. Another deep breath followed, and Armin arched her back, letting out the loudest moan yet, which trickled off into more heavy, rapid breathing, punctuated by little gasps and high, short whines. 

Suddenly, she tensed every muscle she could control, all at once, and turned a whine into a full-throated moan, lifting her hips off the bed to rut against the empty air -- not enough to look desperate, just enough to draw Eren's attention exactly where she wanted it. She forced her voice to crack, and then went silent, still tensed. Armin sucked in a harsh breath, let it out with a contented sigh, and slowly relaxed and returned to her position kneeling on the bed, still breathing heavily. She brought her head forward, and waited until it was angled slightly down to open her eyes, looking up at Eren through her eyelashes. 

She licked her lips and smiled. “How was that?”

Eren was still, his mouth hanging open and his eyes as wide as Armin had ever seen them. He still held up his phone, which continued to record Armin. Behind him, Mikasa had a hand over her mouth, and her own eyes were bright with surprise. 

Eren cleared his throat. “Wow,” was all he had to say.

Mikasa pressed play, and aside from asking why they were shouting and shoving newspaper at her, Armin didn’t speak again until after “Sweet Transvestite” ended.

“I have the weirdest boner right now,” she said. 

Eren chuckled. “I know the feeling.”

Armin turned to Eren, face scrunched up like she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be very confused. “And you thought you were straight?”

“Shut up.”

She shook her head. “I don’t get it, though. I don’t find him attractive, his outfit is horrendous, I don’t even really like his voice, and the song makes me kind of uncomfortable. And yet.”

“And yet.”

She stayed quiet, laughing at their impassioned callbacks but not doing any of her own, until Eren and Mikasa shouted their favourite line along with Dr. Frank-n-Furter -- “ _Use! A! Bit! Of! Mustard!_ ”

“...As lube,” Armin whispered. 

Mikasa and Eren stopped, missing a callback cue, to stare at Armin. 

Eren nodded. “We’re -- Squirt! -- definitely recommending that for the playbill.”

After the movie, and after Mikasa bid them goodnight and left, Armin stayed sitting on Eren’s bed. She cracked all her knuckles, which Eren knew she only did when she was incredibly nervous. 

“What’s up?” he asked. 

“Can I sleep in your bed?” She asked, voice small. 

Eren raised his eyebrows. If she really was falling for him the way he was sure she was, then asking something like that… she was either going to try to seduce him, or she had balls of steel. He was pretty sure she was too tired and too nervous to actually try getting in his pants, though. “Yeah, sure.”

Armin changed into her pyjamas; Eren wore his usual boxers and t-shirt to bed. He took the side closest to the wall, his back pressed up against it; she fit herself snugly in his arms, and he tossed the blanket over both of them. 

They didn’t speak, just drifted off to sleep together, but they shared a thought. Despite their situation, their feelings for each other, their fight… despite it all, they shared a bed and it felt no different from before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is still a poly fic... please to be not calling it strictly ereri... read those tags...


	9. I’m Dreaming Of A White Dorkmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Next up, sleepy dorks. Stay tuned for Levi being great at his job and college students showing off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as of the previous chapter, this is my longest fic i’ve written so far. WOOOO!!!
> 
> now, i’ve been reading your comments, and i think there may be some... confusion going on. i’d like to address it here, in case more people are in the same boat. 
> 
> when i say this fic involves polyamory, i don’t just mean eren has feelings for more than one person, and i certainly don’t mean he’s ultimately going to choose between them. polyamory is having more than one intimate romantic and/or sexual relationship at the same time, with the consent of everyone involved. spoilers: at the end of this fic, eren will be with both armin and levi. it’s awesome to know you guys are forming strong opinions! but you don’t have to; i always intended for eren to choose both of them. 
> 
> i hope that doesn’t turn anyone away from the story. if anything, i’d want that to mean more people can enjoy it. i do plan to give equal attention to both armin’s and levi’s relationship with eren. 
> 
> warnings: OCD headspace, misgendering, spoilers for manga

Armin awoke to the sound of her seven AM phone alarm. She breathed in deep, and as much as she wanted to bury her face in Eren’s warmth, the alarm was annoying as hell, and she extracted her arm from under the blanket, reaching blindly behind her to turn it off. 

Eren, long since used to sleeping through that particular noise, stirred at Armin’s movement. She just barely hit the OK button to snooze the alarm, giving her another ten minutes, when Eren’s arms tightened around her, his face tucking closer into her neck. 

“Don’t go yet,” he whispered, and god, how could Armin say no to that? She didn’t need to shower that badly, after all. She could go one day without, if it meant she could lay here with Eren for a while longer. 

She slipped her hands into Eren’s hair, soft but tangled with bedhead. “I’m not going anywhere.”

A light pressure on her neck stopped her breath. “E-Eren?” There was no mistaking it; he’d just kissed her. 

Armin thought back to the kiss she’d left on his cheek, when was it, two weeks previous? She thought of all the times they’d done that, kissed each other’s cheeks or hands or foreheads, since they were children. The lips on her neck were different, new, and she wanted to hope that her heart wasn’t the only one fluttering. 

Eren pulled back, blinking sleep out of his eyes. “Sorry.”

She thought back to Wednesday night, when Eren had stopped her on the way to the studio to tell her that he’d never cheat on her, as if it was a founding tenet of his life. She thought about then he’d come back to their room Thursday afternoon and told her he’d kissed Levi. And now here they were, on Friday morning, and Eren was kissing her neck, and she had to wonder what his kisses with Levi had really meant to make this not cheating.

“Why did you kiss Levi?” Armin asked. She had to know, and it couldn’t wait any longer. 

“Because I like him,” Eren answered, like it was that simple. 

“And why did you kiss me?”

“Because I like you.” Something about the way he said it was different, but Armin couldn’t place it when she replayed the phrase in her head; it was only when she watched his eyes that she saw it. It wasn’t how he said it; it was the way he looked at her, like he was begging her to return his feelings. As if he didn’t already know she did. “Sorry,” he said again, starting to sit up. 

“No, don’t.” Armin strengthened her hold on him. “It’s fine.”

Eren’s eyes searched hers, and then he closed his and leaned in again, and tucked his head back where it had been against her neck. He settled there, and after a few moments pressed his lips to Armin’s neck again. She reacted with a quick breath in, and curled her fingers into Eren’s shirt. His lips pressed forward again, and she lifted her chin, tilted her head back, inviting him closer. 

Armin laughed, tickled by Eren’s lips, his breath, his eyelashes... and her giggles ended in a gasp when Eren’s tongue poked out to taste her skin, a tiny lick that was warm and wet and shocking. She arched her back, throwing her head back further, and Eren chased her with his lips. 

Her stomach flipped over; disoriented, she realised she was on the floor, the wind knocked out of her. 

“Armin!” Eren scrambled to the edge of the bed, looking down at her, trying to see if she was hurt. “Are you okay?”

She was stunned; her eyes were wide and a little bit crossed, mouth slightly open, and Eren tried to stifle a laugh because she looked adorable but she had just fallen off the bed, and probably hit her head on the frame or the floor. 

“Armin?”

Armin finally remembered how to breathe, and sucked in a deep breath. “I’m fine,” she responded, blinking a few times. A grin broke out across her face, and she curled up, laughing even though her lungs hurt a little. 

“Um, Armin?”

Armin unfolded herself and, still smiling, grabbed the edge of the bed and pulled herself up to Eren’s height. She planted a kiss at the corner of his mouth, more on his lips than not, and he went still. “We should get ready for class,” she said, and she stood up, out of the room in moments. 

The sound of her singing in the shower could be heard through the whole floor. 

\---

Laying back on a horizontal drawing horse, Levi stared at the ceiling. 

Plumbing and electrical systems and heating vents overhead. Wooden support beams at regular intervals. Metal rods, also at regular intervals, holding three large overhead lamps each. Spotlights, irregularly spaced, on tracks in front of three walls. Go to hell, irregular spotlights. One lamp flickering minutely, without a pattern. Distracting. 

Distracting. What’s distracting? Unevenly spaced spotlights. Flickering. The unidentified stains on the tack board lining three of four walls. Tapping of feet down the hall. Rattling in the heating system as it turned on. Dripping sink faucet. Uneven floorboard -- Levi coulf feel it even through his boot. Sound of his own breath. Dust in the air. Distant smell of paint -- his hands itched for it. Dirt under his fingernails. Dirt anywhere. Mess. Dirty laundry. Wrinkled clothes. Stained clothes. Mismatched clothes. Clothes that don’t fit right. Weight ending in .1 or .9 or .4 or .6 and that’s why he doesn’t weigh himself anymore. Sound of blood rushing through his ears. Blood, ever. Taste of his own mouth. Sweat on the back of his knees. Seam of sock not aligned properly with tips of toes. 

And Eren. 

He sat up. Elbows rested on the neck of the drawing horse. Hands covered eyes as he leaned forward. This was going to be a bad day, wasn’t it?

Eren. Eren’s eyes. Eren’s hands. Eren’s lips. Eren’s arm around his back. Eren’s hair between his fingers. Eren’s pinky dripping water down his undercut. Eren pressing him into the sink. Eren lifting him onto the counter. Eren pulling him forward. Eren in between his legs. Eren’s whine when told they couldn’t fuck. 

Eren was a distraction. 

Levi stood up, pacing the room. Eren. Eren. Eren. Eren. Eren. Eren. Eren. Eren. Eren. At least thoughts of Eren got Levi out of old loops, though they tossed him into new ones. Was that good or bad? Doesn’t matter. He shouldn’t be thinking of Eren at all. 

Distractions. Sticky laptop key. Crumbs under laptop key. Smudges on laptop screen. Smudges on TV screen. Electrical whine when first turning on TV. Electrical whine, ever. Whines, ever. 

Eren. 

Lightning. Candles. Smell of fire. Burns. Burning feeling on his lips. 

Eren. 

Too-hot room. Summer. Sand between his toes when he was wearing shoes at the beach. Sand in his swimsuit. Sand in his hair. Hand in his hair. 

Eren. 

Uneven teeth. Undercut getting long. Water dripping down his undercut. 

Eren. 

Hair in front of eyes. Dry eyes. Dry hands. Hands on his ass. 

Eren. 

Papercuts. Torn skin around his nails -- don’t pick at it! 

Eren. 

Lukewarm water. Cold water. Glass of cold water on the counter. 

Eren. 

Oily fingers. Oily fingers leaving smudges on a glass. 

Eren. 

A glass that was still sitting on Levi’s counter, because he just couldn’t bring himself to put it away. 

Eren. 

Sink pressed into his back. 

Eren. 

Eren. 

Eren. 

Eren. 

“Fuck!”

“You all right?”

Levi stopped pacing and turned to the voice. Keith Shadis looked to have just entered the room. He held his phone in his right hand. The screen was cracked. 

Was Eren’s phone cracked? He didn’t remember. 

“I’m fine,” Levi lied. 

Keith didn’t believe him, it was written all over his face, but Levi was an adult and could ostensibly deal with his own issues and they weren’t that close anyway so he left him to it. “Our model cancelled. Think I should give the class a week off?”

“I can model.” Levi said the words without deciding to; he was surprised when he heard them leave his mouth. 

“You sure?”

Levi’s hands shook; he shoved them in his pockets. The torn skin around his nails pulled roughly against the coarse fabric. “It’s fine. I’ll go wash off my makeup.” 

He got his face cleanser from his office, then spent ten minutes in the bathroom getting rid of every last trace of eyeliner. The sensor-activated sink was both a blessing and a curse; he didn’t have to touch it to turn it off after he washed his hands, didn’t have to re-contaminate his hands once he’d just cleaned them… but he had to get his hands into just the right spot to get the sensor to notice him, and the sink stopped as soon as he moved away, and he had to find the right spot every. damn. time. 

Levi dropped his hands onto the sides of the sink, clutching tightly and leaning forward, his head bowed. He looked up and assessed his reflection. 

His face was blotchy after the thorough cleansing it had just received. There was redness around his eyes where Levi had scrubbed at the makeup, adding a distracting contrast to the ever-present dark circles. His hair was in front of his eyes; he blew it out of the way, but it swung right back. His bottom lip was swollen, and had indentations that looked like teeth marks; he hadn’t realised he’d been chewing on his lip. There were drops of water on his collar, easily visible where they dampened the stiff white fabric. His shirt was beginning to wrinkle. 

He looked like hell, and it wasn’t even nine yet. 

Or was it? What time had it been when he left the room to wash his face? Had it been close enough to the start of class? He could be missing homework critique; he wasn’t required to be there for it, but he liked to see what the students were doing. 

He rinsed his hands one last time, grimacing at the sink, and used the air dryer for his hands, not wanting to deal with the residual fibers left behind from a paper towel. 

Most of the students had arrived, but it wasn’t quite nine. He didn’t look to see exactly who was there, though he wanted to. Levi paced around the edge of the room slowly, eyes tracking and assessing each drawing as he passed it, tacked up on the wall. There was Mikasa’s; she’d drawn Armin. Good line quality. Hands could use some work. There was Armin’s; he’d drawn Eren, and Levi stared a little longer than he should have before tearing his eyes away. Armin wasn’t by any means an exceptional artist, but he tried very hard and he showed improvement every week, showed a concrete grasp of new topics. 

If Armin and Mikasa had arrived, then maybe… 

There was Eren’s. He’d also drawn Armin, but in a different pose than Mikasa had. Simpler. More natural, as Armin was himself drawing; it appeared Armin and Eren had drawn each other at the same time, and Mikasa had posed Armin with a book while she drew. 

There was something almost reverent about Eren’s drawing, though, just as there had been the week before, and the week before that… 

No. Levi was _not_ going to get jealous over a student. He was already falling head-over-heels in lust with another student, that was e-fucking-nough. 

Eren came up next to him. “Armin’s a good model.”

“He certainly is.” 

Eren flinched; it was just a little twitch, but Levi noticed. It was distracting, and Levi didn’t understand why he’d done it. He hated not understanding. 

“You’re a good artist, too,” Levi said. 

“D’you really mean that?”

“I don’t give compliments unless I mean them, brat.”

“Oh. Okay.” 

“Did he stay still for this or were you drawing each other at the same time?”

“Huh?” 

“Armin. Did he pose?”

Eren flinched again. “Um. No. We were drawing each other.” As Levi thought. 

“He’s--” Eren twitched a third time, and something clicked in Levi’s head. His voice dropped, quiet as a whisper but without the hissing that annoyed him so. “She’s very close to you.”

Eren’s eyes went wide, and he looked to Levi with a hint of fear. 

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Levi promised. 

With a sigh of relief, Eren let loose the tension that had just coiled up through every muscle in his body. “Yeah,” he said, responding to Levi’s observation. “Yeah, we’re close. I’ve known Armin for as long as I can remember. Can’t imagine my life without Armin at this point. We’re about as close as friends can get, I think.”

“Armin’s lucky to have you.”

Eren shook his head. “No. I’m lucky to have Armin.”

Levi wanted to respond, wanted to tell Eren to ask her out already, tell him that he could fulfill a hundred percent of his happiness -- and Armin’s -- if he did, but Keith called the class together. Glancing at the clock, Levi noticed it was a minute after nine. He sighed, irritated, and joined the students at the other end of the room to discuss Sasha and Jean’s homework. 

Sasha had drawn Connie. In the portrait, Connie appeared to be sitting on the floor with his knees slightly bent. He leaned forward over his legs, knees tucked in his armpits. He wore baggy jeans, cinched tight at his waist with a belt, and a long-sleeved shirt, also loose. His face, turned mostly towards the viewer, was contorted in a yawn. 

Levi spoke up, as no-one else came forward. “Did you draw from a photo or did he hold his face like that for you?”

A few snickers passed over the class. 

“No, he held the face,” Sasha replied. “He insisted on it, actually.” Connie, who was braiding her ponytail, grinned. 

That got the class talking. Levi let their chatter fade into the background, the soundtrack to his more pressing personal thoughts. 

Eren. 

Levi was about to undress again, in front of Eren, who he’d just made out with like a horny teenager less than twenty-four hours earlier. He was about to subject himself to the slow burn of Eren’s bright eyes roving over his body, committing every curve, fold, angle, mark, and scar both to paper and to memory. He’d have to stand there, unmoving, feel that burn, feel the phantom touches of Eren on his body that Levi still remembered from their fifteen minutes in heaven. He’d have to do that without getting turned on. Levi briefly wondered if he’d washed his dick that morning, before realising, _of course_ he did. 

He realised his hands were shaking again and unfolded his arms, tucking his hands in his pockets once again. 

The class moved on to Jean’s portrait. He’d drawn himself, staring intensely and directly at the viewer, but up through his eyelashes as his head was turned slightly down. One leg was propped up on the other, and a drawing board rested on his lap. His jeans were torn at the knee. He wore a jacket with its sleeves torn as well, but unevenly, one cut off at his elbow and the other mid-bicep, over a plain button-down. Unlike the previous week, he hadn’t gone overboard with the details on his clothing or the shine of the plugs in his earlobes, focussing more on the relationships between different parts of his body. 

The students found it easier to get into the flow of critique the second time around, so Levi went back to his thoughts. 

Eren Jager. Age: nineteen. Height: taller than Levi. Maybe a seven out of ten, if you didn’t factor in the eyes or the personality or the fire or the absolute devotion to people he cared about. With them… off the scale. 

Levi wanted to touch him. Wanted to kiss him. Wanted to bend him over the nearest waist-height surface and fuck him until he screamed, to hell with whoever might be watching. 

Levi wanted to maintain a respectful distance. Wanted to stop staring. Wanted to stop thinking about him like they could ever be together, because they could. They so easily could, but they shouldn’t. 

The critique ended, and the students began gathering materials and claiming drawing horses. Levi went back to his corner and began to undress, carefully folding his clothes and resting them on the drawing horse he’d cleaned thoroughly and laid down on earlier. He leaned his boots against the wall. 

Eren stood between Armin and Mikasa. 

Mikasa was Eren’s sister; one of them was adopted, probably, if the differences in their looks were anything to go by. Mikasa Ackerman -- god, wouldn’t it have been just perfect if Levi had told Eren his last name that first day? There was probably no relation, but still. The look on Eren’s face would have been priceless. And he’s sent his email to Levi’s personal address, which didn’t have his last name in it; he probably still didn’t know. 

And then there was Armin Arlert, Eren’s childhood friend. He -- no, _she_ had a bond with Eren that Levi knew was there, but couldn’t even begin to comprehend. The closest thing he had was his relationship with Farlan and Isabel, but it still wasn’t even close. He hadn’t seen them for years, and he was all right; besides, there was something simmering below the surface of Eren and Armin’s friendship, something Levi could never feel for his “siblings”. 

He knew, in that moment, that if he was right, and Armin really was Eren’s person, the one for which he’d admitted to possibly having some romantic feelings, then Eren would choose her. There was no doubt. Just from what little Levi had seen of them at the beginning and end of class, and from the way Eren talked about her, he knew. He would do anything for her. 

Levi wished Eren the best, but it still, inexplicably, hurt. 

Eren looked surprised to see Levi up on the model stand again, but aside from a little smirk, he didn’t show any indication that he was going to go through this the way he had the day they met. He worked diligently through thirty half-minute gesture drawings, even when Levi started to grasp for ideas and broke out the yoga poses, showing off his flexibility; Eren had kept to his work, treating Levi like any other model. 

It confused the hell out of Levi, and kind of worried him. Had Eren sated his desires with their kisses? Surely not; he’d whined for more. 

Levi’s head hurt. He’d only paid half his attention to giving all the students an equal view, and so he faced away from Eren for the last few gestures. 

Fifteen minutes had passed since Levi climbed the model stand. Fifteen minutes, like the time Levi and Eren had spent sucking face in Levi’s apartment. 

He took a break, throwing on the robe Keith offered him and escaping to the bathroom, then came back and did two half-hour poses, both standing. He faced a quarter-turn away from Eren each time, in opposite directions. His thoughts still raced, but they raced without the addition of Eren’s reactions -- or lack thereof -- to add fuel to the fire. 

Where was that fire even growing? It seemed to spread all over his body, wrapping him in a cocoon of heat, but where was it coming from? Probably his stomach. He felt a little nauseous. 

In his second break, between the first and second half-hour poses, he decided to forgo the robe, instead putting his jeans on, not bothering with underwear or a shirt, and took a walk barefoot down the hall, hands jammed into his pockets. 

Eren caught up with him after a minute. “Hey. Are you okay? You seem, uh, nervous.”

“I am nervous,” Levi admitted. “Are you going to laugh at me?”

“No. Why would I do that?”

Bless his heart, but he didn’t have any clue. He didn’t know how Levi’s mind ran circles around him, picked out tiny inconsistencies and made them earth-shattering problems to be solved and solved and solved again, tumbling below projected false confidence and an intimidating exterior. A shell, a mask, a disguise. He didn’t know what Levi meant when he said “I’m nervous.”

Levi needed to clean. Or paint. Or hit something. 

He settled for continuing to pace up and down the hall, Eren at his side. The proximity was terrifying, but also… nice. Comforting. He couldn’t exactly say Eren “grounded” him, not with all of Levi’s frantic thoughts and jumping heart rates. But Eren being so close made Levi’s thoughts about him concrete, rather than abstract; here was the object of his affe-- erections, in the flesh, close and warm and now. He was immediate. Levi still didn’t know what to do about him, still didn’t know when to do any of those things, still didn’t know if he could stop himself from wanting, knew, in fact, that he could _not_ stop himself from wanting, but Eren matching his stride made all those thoughts okay. Levi didn’t have to know. 

It probably wasn’t a good idea to idolise Eren. After all, he was human, too. 

“I’m… I’m gonna go for it. She likes me and I like her. I- I should, right?”

Levi managed to not curl in on himself, to not bow his shoulders nor let his face show how much it hurt that he was losing Eren, because this was what he’d told Eren to do, and he’d meant it. He still meant it. 

_Don’t wait for me._

Levi nodded. “Yeah. Have fun.” His voice betrayed nothing, but his hands were still in his pockets. He hoped Eren didn’t know him well enough to read his body language. 

“Hey, let’s get back to class,” Eren said. He touched Levi’s bare arm, just below his elbow; it felt like fire, but Levi didn’t jump back as if burned. He stayed, revelled in the slow heat as it traveled outward from the spot on his arm, and Eren pulled him gently back to the room. 

He still had an hour-long pose to go, with two breaks. He picked up a heavy wooden cube, each side about two feet across, and stuck it in the middle of the model stand, then topped it with a pillow and kneeled on it. He put his hands on his knees and lowered his head, as if praying. 

Maybe, in a way, he was. He was praying to himself, trying to call out to the part of him that knew how to make decisions, and force it to figure out what to do about Eren. In the frigid, turbulent sea of his thoughts, Levi could really use a warm ray of light. 

Levi faced directly away from Eren, and he knew the student might take it as a rejection or an insult, so he resolved to reassure him later somehow. But it wasn’t that at all. Secretly one for dramatic, symbolic gestures, Levi kneeled and bared his back to Eren as a show of vulnerability, because it was okay to be vulnerable for Eren. And he presented Eren with a full view of the tattoos on his back, a bird’s wing on his right shoulder and a bat’s on his left, because the memory of Eren was burned onto Levi’s skin, permanent, forever, like the ink under his skin. 

Even if Eren loved someone else. 

He wondered if Eren would appreciate the gesture, if Levi ever got around to explaining it. As it was, he looked for Eren during his breaks and, though he avoided conversation, smiled at Eren with just his eyes. 

Eren grinned back, all sunshine. 

\---

Armin disappeared after lunch, saying she had “stuff to do” and would “be back in time for work”. Usually Eren would expect such disappearances to involve her taking a trip to the library to do homework, but she emptied all the books out of her bag and dropped her desk speakers into it. 

True to her word, she was back in the dorm when Eren returned from Digital Art, and they headed down to their Friday dinner shift. Armin hummed her way through scraping half-eaten food scraps and rinsing condiment residue off of the dishes; Eren recognised the tune, but couldn’t place it, so he left her to it while he ran the dishes through the washer. 

“So, how did your audition go?” Armin asked. 

“It was good, I think. They said I’d have made Freddie Mercury proud.”

“Wow.” She raised her eyebrows. “That’s a pretty big compliment.”

“I guess so. I’m still kind of shocked they said it. Like, I grew up on his music, you know? My parents played Queen all the time when I was a kid, so it just always stuck with me. And then the first time I found out gay people existed was because of Freddie, so there’s that.”

“That’s funny, since he was bisexual.”

“What?” The dishwasher beeped, signalling it was finished, and Eren opened it up, sliding out the dish rack to let them cool and dry. 

“Yeah. He’s one of the most famous gay men of all time, but he was actually bisexual. And most people think he was white, too, but he was Indian.”

Eren stood there, shock-still, and updated his mental Freddie Mercury file, hoping he wouldn’t forget. He had a good memory with regards to facts about people, so he probably would remember; it was events, especially those upcoming, that didn’t file themselves away properly. “I feel a lot closer to him than I did before.” 

“How did you not know that? You can find it on his Wikipedia page.” Armin pushed another full tray of rinsed plates towards Eren, to be washed. 

Eren stuck them in the washer, then ran it. “You’re the one that does research for fun, not me. He’s really Indian?”

“Mm-hm.” Armin nodded, and went to check the dish drop. “Seriously, read his page tonight.”

“I will. Remind me later.” 

Armin hefted a stack of dirty plates over to her rinsing station, propping them up in the tray and setting the hose on them. “So… Anything else interesting happen at the audition?”

“Not really. They had me do a short scene as Riff-Raff. Managed to do it all from memory. Why, are you thinking of trying out?”

“Yeah. I’m going right after dinner.” Armin chanced a worried look at Eren. “If it’s okay with you, I mean. I know it’s your thing…”

Eren shook his head. “It’s Mikasa’s thing, really. She’d tell you to go for it. You want me to come with you as moral support?”

“Yeah. That’d be nice.”

At the end of their shift, they grabbed their coats from their dorm (rather, Armin grabbed her coat, and Eren grabbed his usual sweatshirt), and headed down to the theatre building. On the way, Armin texted Mikasa, who was at Fencing practice; she texted back when they were almost at the building, and her response made Armin smile. 

There was a bit of a wait when they arrived; the next six slots were already taken, so Armin signed up for one half an hour away. It gave her plenty of time to fill out her audition form (she remembered the correct answer for the condiments question) and go over the scene on the back. She and Eren bounced lines back and forth, Armin from her sheet, Eren mostly from memory, a true testament to just how many times he’d seen the film. 

The first time he’d watched it had been two weeks after the accident, when he’d finally woken up. He was concussed, delirious with painkillers, stuck full of needles and tubes, strapped down to the hospital bed, and his head was partially shaved and wrapped in gauze and medicated cotton and more stitches than he cared to count after a surgery to set his fractured skull properly. Mikasa was curled up next to him on the bed, and she refused to answer any of his questions about the accident, just shushed him and pointed at the tiny TV screen. He hadn’t remembered a thing about it, and after coming home another three weeks later and having the accident and his mother’s death explained to him by his father, and re-explained more thoroughly and angrily by Mikasa, he insisted they watch Rocky Horror again, and again, and again until he could actually remember who the aliens were and how many characters Frank had sex with. 

That was another reason he and Mikasa watched it so much; it was a reminder that the two of them, as each other’s family, were unbreakable. 

He couldn’t be happier to welcome Armin into that tradition. 

“Are you gonna show off your high range?” Eren asked, a few minutes before Armin’s audition slot. 

“Maybe.”

Armin’s name was called (pronounced incorrectly by the student auditioning before her), and she stood, brushed off her pants, and fist-bumped Eren before entering the room. 

The audition room was really a classroom with a raised platform, maybe ten feet by six feet, underneath a small set of spotlights, which were turned off in favour of the overhead fluorescents. A woman greeted Armin at the door. She was almost a full head shorter than Armin, and looked older by maybe twenty years, but otherwise the two of them shared a lot in appearance. They had the same colour hair and eyes, the same pale skin, almost the same build, and Armin swore they were wearing the same pants, though the older woman’s were turned up twice at the ankle. Another woman, taller and darker and biting her nails, sat on one half of a short couch, glaring at a stack of papers in her lap. She looked younger than the blonde woman, but still older than Armin, and even without the deadly-looking high heels she wore, she probably towered over both of them. 

The woman at the door took Armin’s form and introduced herself. “I’m Krista. The angry one is Ymir.” Ymir blew a raspberry at Krista, who laughed. “On the stage, please, Mr…” She looked down at Armin’s form for her last name. 

“Miss,” Armin interrupted. Her phone, heavy in her pocket, reminded her of Mikasa’s text -- _break a leg. btw you can come out to the directors and expect the best. only if you want obvs but you can trust them_ \-- and she swallowed thickly around the nervousness starting to choke her. “Arlert.”

Krista didn’t even bat an eye. “My apologies, Miss Arlert.” She gestured towards the platform, then joined Ymir on the couch. She smacked at Ymir’s hand, whispering “stop that!”, and Ymir scowled before taking her well-chewed fingernails out of her mouth. “Would you prefer to sing first, or speak?”

“Sing,” Armin replied. 

Ymir sat up straight and nodded at her. Armin cleared her throat, and began to sing.

\---

“Sasha?” 

An excited squeal followed Armin’s voice; Sasha jumped on her, squeezing her in a hug and nearly knocking her over, and then dashed into the audition room. Armin’s cheeks were flushed, had been since she left the room, and when Eren stood she walked over to him and grabbed his hand. WIthout a word, she dragged him out of the building, and their hands stayed clutched together. 

It was snowing again, much harder now than the last time, and snowflakes stuck to Eren and Armin’s hair. Eren flipped his hood up, letting the snow accumulate in a pile on top; Armin’s coat didn’t have one, but she didn’t notice the snow, just trudged forward through the thin layer already on the ground. The street scrapers weren’t out yet, but the air smelled heavily of soy sauce, indicating the extra-strength ice melter had already been distributed liberally throughout campus and the surrounding town. 

“So, uh, how did it go?” Eren asked. 

Armin didn’t respond directly; instead she started humming. Before Eren could ask again, she broke out into song. 

Eren let Armin drag him across campus, through the fresh, thin snow on the darkened sidewalks and the slightly brown slush on the street, a soft smile growing on his face because, yeah, she _was_ showing off her high range. She looked back a few times, and the streetlights illuminated her flushed cheeks and glittered on the snowflakes sticking to her eyelashes. 

At one point, she turned around completely and grabbed both of his hands, walking backwards and still singing. “ _You’ve seen my worst, and yet you see some hope in me._ ”

Eren tugged on Armin’s hands and they came to a stop under a down-facing sidewalk lamp. He tried to pull her forward, but she let go of one of his hands, pressing her fingers to his lips while she finished the song. _Be patient_ , the gesture said, loud and clear, like her voice as it carried her song to him and the nearby houses. A few students opened their windows to listen, curious enough to brave the cold for a few minutes; one, who appeared to have taken the screen off her window, leaned her head out and whistled. 

Armin kept going, flushing more at the attention but not letting her eyes leave Eren’s until the song was complete. Only then did she even close her eyes for more than a blink, as he hand left Eren’s lips and curled around the back of his neck. She hopped up onto her toes and completed the kiss Eren had tried for earlier. 

The student leaning out her window whistled again, shouting “get it, girl!” Armin laughed against Eren’s lips, and he started to laugh too, but she cut him off with another kiss, leaning back on her heels so he had to stoop over her. 

She broke away from him and curled into his chest. His arms wrapped around her, tight and warm. She wanted to say something; she wanted to ask, “you’re sure you’re not cheating on me?”, but she didn’t, because she trusted him. Armin trusted that he’d explain in due time what was going on, and until then, she was going to hold onto this moment, and not say anything. Preserve it in her memory. 

Besides, it was just a kiss. It didn’t have to be anything more; it didn’t have to mean something. Maybe it would, and maybe they’d talk about it, but she was riding the high from a good audition and an even better kiss in the snow and she was happy with the way it was. 

\---

Armin and Eren woke up in each other’s arms again, this time in Armin’s bed. They hadn’t said a thing to each other since their kiss the night before; they got to their room, changed into pyjamas, and Armin pulled him into bed with her. They curled up around each other, arms and legs intertwined like they never meant to let go. 

But Eren’s alarm woke them at eight-thirty, and he groaned loudly. Of all the days for him to have work in the morning, it had to be this one. 

“Nooooooo!” Armin tried to keep hold of him, wrapping close and tight like an octopus and not letting go even when he started to get out of bed and she dangled off of him. She whined directly into his ear. 

“Armin, come on, I have to get to the museum.”

“But I wanna cuddle!” 

“We can cuddle after I go earn some money.”

“No-one even comes to the museum on Saturday morning.” 

Eren tried to pry her off, but Armin held on tight. “I still have to be there.” He kissed her ear, the only part of her in reach of his lips. “I’ll be back right after. I’ll even bring you a milkshake.”

“But that’ll be hours from now!”

“Armin.” He leaned over the bed so she had somewhere soft to land, the wiggled back and forth until Armin slipped off of him. She fell onto the bed with a squeak of surprise, and really, Armin needed to capitalise on how adorable she was when her filters were down; Eren almost gave in when she turned her big eyes up to him and pouted. 

Only the necessity of his continued paycheck dragged him away from Armin, and he felt horrible about it, but she had already fallen back asleep by the time he was dressed. He gave her one last look before he left. 

As he checked the door to his room to make sure it was locked, he heard another door open behind him. Mikasa shouldn’t be up at this hour -- she never was -- so who else was opening the door across the hall?

He turned, and was more than a little stunned to see Sasha leaving Mikasa’s room, still wearing the same clothes he’d seen her in the night before. Not only was she nearly an hour late for work at the campus center cafe, but also, she couldn’t be doing a Walk of Shame. It wasn’t like Mikasa would be sleeping with anyone. In fact, he didn’t even know she and Sasha knew each other well enough to share a room for a night. 

Sasha gasped when she saw Eren, and flattened herself against the door with a bang that might have woken the dragon behind the door. “Fuck!” she whispered, just loud enough for Eren to hear, and sprinted down the hall. 

Eren caught up with her at the bottom of the stairs. “Aren’t you late for work?”

“Jean is covering for me. I didn’t have sex with your sister,” she said, a little frantic. “I swear on everything I will ever eat in my life.”

“I believe you,” Eren said. And he did, definitely; Mikasa had long since made it very clear that, even though she talked about sex just as often as anyone else they knew, it wasn’t something she had any interest in. That didn’t explain why Sasha was there in the first place. “What _did_ you do?”

“We talked. I just wanted to talk to her, and then we fell asleep. Fully clothed.”

“I believe you,” Eren repeated. “Trust me, I know Mikasa. I was just curious, since I didn’t think you two were all that close.”

Sasha sighed in relief. “We weren’t, really. I mean, I wanted to be her friend. She seemed… cool, if a little intimidating, and she was close to you and Armin, and I like you both, so she’s surely pretty great, too, right? And I guess she wanted to get closer, too. I don’t know. We’ve been spending time together now, just the two of us. I like it.” She intertwined her fingers in front of her, cracking all her knuckles at once, then stretched her arms over her head and smiled. “She’s really different from me, in a good way. And, you know, I always thought she didn’t have a sense of humour, but she’s actually really funny!”

They crossed the street to the campus center together, Sasha still singing Mikasa’s praises and Eren nodding along, because after so long living with his sister he sometimes took her for granted, and it was nice to hear someone gush over her like this. And when they got to the cafe, Sasha cut herself off, saying “Duty calls!”, and rushed behind the counter, thanking Jean about a million times while he groaned in return -- “Yeah, yeah, whatever, don’t do it again, but it’s fine, Mister Gettin’ Some here is our first customer.”

“The usual,” Eren ordered. “And I’m not ‘getting some.’ I’m not even dating Levi.” _I might be dating Armin,_ he wanted to add, but didn’t, because that would bring up a big conversation he didn’t want to cringe his way through, and he had work in about ten minutes anyway. 

\---

_Hello, Potential Transylvanian! We’re e-mailing to tell you that you’ve made it to callbacks for the Rocky Horror Show. Callbacks will be this Tuesday evening, beginning at 6 PM. Be prepared to dance, and also be prepared to stay until midnight._

_The first draft of our rehearsal schedule is attached. Please take a look before you come to callbacks._

_With love from Transsexual,_

_Krista and Ymir_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> armin’s audition song was “[life in color](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c8m66tf7Rk)” by onerepublic; it’s the same song she sang to eren after her audition. 
> 
> if anyone wants to keep up with how fast i’m writing or wants to talk to me about this fic with a little more certainty that i will reply or, i don’t know, cares to know more about my interests for some odd reason, my tumblr is nouveauqueer. also i’m posting this under the tag “fic: orange” so um do with that what you will.


	10. Double Rainbow Across the Chai

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Trio gets Horny (Horn-y, get it?), Levi enjoys a shared shower, and two pairs of confused college students discuss callbacks and cuddle. A Wild Non-Binary Scientist Appears and uses Voice Of Reason. There’s a special surprise at the bottom of the box.

“Let me know if you have any questions, and just ring the bell when you’re ready to order.” Their server left the table, her short, bleach-white hair ruffling as she bounced away; unfortunately, she couldn’t take the tension with her. 

When Eren and Armin crossed the hall half an hour earlier to kidnap Mikasa, they hadn’t expected Sasha to once again be in her room, nor for her to follow along on Mikasa’s birthday trip to Horn Teahouse. It wasn’t that they didn’t like her. They were all friends, of course. But they’d expected it to be just the three of them. 

Mikasa felt the tension too, and if it had been anyone else she would have kicked them out, said “See you later!” and gone on her merry way. But Sasha was different. Sasha had spent the majority of the last three days in Mikasa’s dorm, talking her ear off, trusting Mikasa with things she didn’t know how to tell anyone else. And Mikasa had listened, at first because she felt a responsibility to do so, and later because she grew to really like Sasha’s company. 

Then again, Sasha didn’t know about Armin, which meant not only would Armin be uncomfortable and, yet more, misgendered by all of them for the hour they’d spend in Horn, but despite all the time Mikasa had spent with Sasha she still didn’t know what would happen should one of them slip up and call Armin “she”, like they _should_. 

Sasha stared at the little bell sat in the middle of the table. “It’s so strange that we’re supposed to ring a bell to order. I feel like I’m being rude.”

No-one responded. 

“So, um, since I’ve never been here before… what’s good?

“Everything,” Mikasa said. It was honest, at least, even if her tone was a little short. “Get the Japanese rice bowl.”

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life,” Eren said, trying to ease the tension. It didn’t help much that his voice was pitched-up through his suddenly dry throat. 

Sasha looked around at the other three at the table, then shut her menu. “I’m making this awkward. I can… I can go.”

Mikasa opened her mouth, ready with an automatic “no, it’s fine, stay,” but her eyes flicked to Armin before she got the words out and they died in her throat. 

Armin picked up the slack; for all that she was uncomfortable, she didn’t want to exclude Sasha. “It’s fine, we just weren’t expecting you. Please stay.”

Sasha shook her head. “No, I don’t want to intrude. It’s fine; Mikasa and I can do something later.” She hugged Mikasa quickly, and Mikasa surprised everyone by leaning into it; she wasn’t even this fond of physical contact with Eren or Armin unless they needed it for comfort. “Happy Birthday. And thanks for listening to me.” Sasha stood, smiled brightly, and without another word she left the tea house. 

The table was silent, all three remaining occupants watching her go. After she got out the door, Eren spoke up. “I feel like an asshole.”

“I’m sorry,” Mikasa said. “If I had known you two were going to drag me somewhere for my birthday, I would’ve asked her to leave beforehand. I know our trio birthdays are important.”

“Don’t feel bad about it.” Armin put her hand on Mikasa’s shoulder to comfort her. “I’m glad you’re making some more friends.”

“Better than Jean, at least,” Eren mumbled. 

“He’s your friend too, you know.”

Eren scoffed. “Barely. Let’s get some tea, okay? Then you and Sasha can do... whatever it is you’re going to do.”

“We’ll probably end up in my room eating Easy Mac and talking all night again.” Mikasa flipped through the food, already having decided to let the tea experts surprise her. “Well, I’ve got Performance practice hours booked tonight, so we’ll talk until then. Maybe she’ll come listen to me practice, I don’t know.” 

“You sure are spending a lot of time together,” Armin said. She closed her eyes and flipped to a random page, dramatically pressing her finger down blindly at one of the teas. She took a look at it and seemed content with her choice, as she then turned to the food. 

“She’s sweet. A little eccentric, and really, really obsessed with food, but sweet. And she… trusts me, for some reason. Don’t know what I did to earn it.”

“You’re very trustworthy,” Eren said. 

Mikasa rolled her eyes. “No, I’m just loyal to my friends. Though I guess she is my friend now. You know, you two can spread out. We have more room now.”

Eren and Armin sat right next to each other at the low table, their legs pressed together between their cushions. Neither made any move to separate. “We’re fine,” Armin said.

Mikasa raised her eyebrows, but said nothing else about it. 

\---

“You’re distracted.”

Levi sighed and put down his palette knife. He grimaced at Petra. “What gave it away?”

“What didn’t give it away?” she answered. “You're... reacting. Emoting. You were like this yesterday, and Friday night too. Did something happen?”

Levi debated not telling Petra; he was under no obligations to tell her anything, seeing as he was paying her to be here. But the gleam in her eye said she wasn’t giving up, and hell, if he was paying her to be here and he wasn’t going to paint her properly, he might as well get something out of her time. “It’s Eren.”

“Ooh, the student. Did you fuck him already?”

“No!” Levi shouted. He fisted his hands in his hair, realising too late that the latex gloves he wore were covered in paint. “God damn it.” Petra snorted into her hand, but she withered under the glare Levi sent her. “I didn’t fuck him. I kissed him, and then I told him I wouldn’t fuck him, and not to wait for me. And of course the little shit already had someone else in mind. I bet he’s with him right now, they were already attached at the fucking hip.” He realised too late his mistake, calling Armin “him”, but Petra had already started responding before he could correct himself. 

“Why did you tell him not to wait for you if you wanted him to wait for you?”

“That’s just it. I don’t want him to wait for me.” Levi sat down on the nearest clean seat, a once-broken spinning art stool he’d stolen from Wall’s art dumpster and fixed up himself. “I want him to be happy, whether it’s with me or not. I don’t want him to wait forever for me to get over my issues. It just pisses me off that I’m already down to zero chance.”

Petra, sensing the painting session was over, or at least on hiatus, moved her chair over next to Levi’s. “That almost sounded noble. You’re not going to try to turn him to you, are you?”

“No, fuck, I’m not that much of an asshole.”

“Sure you’re not.” Petra looked pensive for a moment. “Is it possible…” She bit her lip, unsure if she was seeing this through biased lenses. Oh well, it wouldn’t hurt to try. “Say you did get over your reservations about dating a student. Do you think he’d be up for two relationships at once?”

“Not everyone’s polyamorous, Petra.”

“What if he was. Would you be okay with being one of his two boyfriends?”

“He’s, um. No, he’s got a girlfriend. I fucked up before.”

“One of his two partners, then.” When Levi turned up his nose at the word _partners_ , Petra punched him in the arm. “Don’t be picky about terminology. Would you be okay with that?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think Eren’s girlfriend would?”

“I have no fucking clue. I get the feeling she doesn’t like me much, though, so probably not. But I don’t think Eren would want that anyway, so it doesn’t matter. I’ll get over it.”

“You should ask him.” Petra pinched the edges of Levi’s latex gloves and took them off of him, laying them on the little table next to his palette, then hefted him up by the arm. “Come on, I’ll help you get the paint out of your hair.”

“Wait, hold on, do you mean you’re going to shower with me?”

“Is that a problem?” 

Levi gaped at her, and Petra wondered why she hadn’t said anything sooner; if he was showing his emotions this clearly, and he had been all weekend, then the problem was definitely a serious one, far more serious than his explanation let on. 

“I need words, Levi.”

“Fine. But don’t try to have sex with me in the shower.”

“I won’t. I’m no-one’s rebound, and I wouldn’t take advantage of you when you’re vulnerable.”

“I am _not_ vulnerable. Go turn the water on, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Petra left to put the water on; Levi headed for his kitchen, shuffling things around in the pantry to get to the vegetable oil. There was still about half a bottle left, and he poured some in a plastic cup before heading to the bathroom. Petra’s jeans were on his bed, not folded like he would have preferred but at least laid out flat with some semblance of respect for Levi’s standards of order. There was a bulge in the front pocket -- probably her underwear. 

Levi folded his own pants and underwear before sticking them in the hamper, and hung his shirt up on the steamer. 

Petra was sitting on the edge of the tub when Levi entered the bathroom, her legs crossed, and she ran her fingers under the faucet. “It’s warm.”

“I usually shower with scalding.”

“Me too.” She turned the dial up as high as it would go, and pulled the plug to direct the water to the shower head. She stepped in, hissing as the water ran over her; steam started to rise. “You getting in?” 

Levi handed her the cup of oil -- “gets the paint out” -- and stepped in. 

He didn’t voice any reaction of pain, despite the possibly dangerous temperature of the water; a boiling-hot shower was, to Levi, a calming shower. It figured he would get swept up by a guy who sparked the same heat in him. 

Levi did, however, let out a surprised noise when he felt a sharp slap to his ass. “Stop thinking about Eren,” Petra commanded. 

“Don’t tell me what to do.” He leaned his head back. “Oil goes in my hair. Work it in with your hands.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Petra echoed, but she poured about half of the oil on him anyway. She stuck the rim of the cup between her teeth and used both hands to rub it in, massaging his scalp along the way. 

Levi hummed at the pressure. “Strong hands.”

“I know.” Petra’s response was a little garbled by the cup between her teeth, but the message got through well enough. She poured out the rest of the oil, rested the cup on the empty soap ledge, and rubbed it in further, running her fingers through the strands covered in paint. The paint started to come out, transferring to her fingers and running down her arms. 

“Wash it off your hands, and keep rubbing the oil in until the paint’s all out.” 

When all traces of the paint were gone, Petra pushed him forward slightly, and he ducked his head under the spray, letting some of the oil drain out. He reached for one of the multitudes of bottles on his shower shelf, and handed it back. “Shampoo,” he said. “I assume you know what to do with it.”

She dealt another slap to his ass, in the same still-pink spot she’d done it before, and Levi yelped, grabbing onto the shelf to keep from falling. “Don’t be fucking rude,” she said. 

“And it’s not rude to hit me?”

“I don’t hear you telling me to stop.”

Levi turned his head and leveled a glare at her over his shoulder. “Stop it.” 

Petra shrugged. “Done.” She held up a hand, palm full of shampoo, and Levi turned back around, letting her renew her massage. 

The magic of Petra’s fingers hadn’t suddenly gotten a boost, but now that the gross, slimy texture of the oil was leaving Levi’s hair rather than entering it, he enjoyed it more. His shoulders slumped, and he sighed, letting her do what she pleased with his head. 

His thoughts strayed to Eren again, as they always seemed to, and he hoped Petra wasn’t really a mind-reader. Levi tried to imagine Eren massaging his head, like Petra was, but he couldn’t do it; that would require method and patience, neither of which were qualities he’d yet seen in Eren. Perhaps, to the casual observer, Eren’s way of drawing slowly and expecting perfection might imply those qualities, but Levi had seen only frustration and determination.

He couldn’t imagine Eren giving a massage, but he could certainly imagine more of the kisses that were still fresh in his mind. Eren’s fingers threaded through Levi’s hair, not applying pressure, only heat. Another hand on Levi’s hip, more heat. Lips on lips, heat. 

Petra pressed into a particularly sensitive spot at Levi’s nape, and he hissed. 

“You know how I know you’re thinking about Eren again?” Petra asked. Without Levi’s prompting, she went ahead and answered. One hand left Levi’s hair, and she slid her arm over his shoulder pointing her index finger down. “Little Levi is standing to attention. My head massages aren’t _that_ good.”

“How do you know I’m not thinking about _you_?”

“Are you thinking about me?”

“No.” 

She grabbed his head with both hands and shoved him under the water; Levi spluttered as she rinsed his hair a little more roughly than necessary. “Don’t underestimate me.”

“Don’t drown me!” Levi shouted. Petra jerked his head back towards her, reaching around him for the conditioner. He let her continue washing him, trying to keep his thoughts away from Eren; by the time she got to lathering up his body, his erection had mostly gone down. 

“Good boy,” Petra said. She stared directly at Levi’s cock, bringing her eyes up after a length of time somewhere between appreciative and uncomfortable. 

At this point, Levi wasn’t particularly surprised that Petra stared so openly. He did still wonder why she was doing this in the first place. “Do you usually shower with your employers?”

“No. But I do often shower with my friends.”

“Is that what we are?” 

Petra knelt down in front of Levi and started washing his legs. “I would hope so. Otherwise this would be really awkward.” 

After finishing with Levi, Petra quickly scrubbed herself down; Levi offered to return the favour, but she rolled her eyes and waved him off. “You can pay me back when I come to you near tears over a relationship. Not that I ever expected you to cry, but it’s a relative equivalence.” She wrapped a towel around herself and then towelled him down carefully. She tossed a third towel over his head, rubbing vigorously at his hair, then tugged the ends down, leaving the middle over his head like a hood. “You look adorable like this.”

“I’m not adorable. I’m manly as hell.”

Petra burst out laughing. 

\---

As soon as she got back to her room, Mikasa called Sasha over. Ten minutes later, they were eating Easy Mac and sharing a Dr. Pepper, cross-legged on Mikasa’s unmade bed. 

“There’s something bothering you,” Sasha said. It surprised Mikasa; she wasn’t usually that good at reading people. Even the fact that she'd taken notice to the discomfort present at their table in Horn was incredible. 

“Am I that obvious?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?” Mikasa didn’t respond at first, so Sasha pushed a little. “I just spent three days freaking out on you. You can talk to me.”

“It’s not my place to talk about it.”

“Ah. I understand. Is this the thing about Armin that you can’t talk about, or are you keeping someone else’s secrets too?” 

“It’s… kind of both. Sorry, I… I just, I’ll get over it.”

Sasha’s eyebrows pinched together. She shovelled the last of her Easy Mac into her mouth, dropped the cup into the trash, and scooted across the bed, squeezing in between Mikasa and the wall. She leaned her head on Mikasa’s shoulder and hugged her around the waist. “If something’s bothering you, you need to talk about it. Doesn’t have to be with me; talk to whoever’s secrets your keeping. You deserve to be able to ease your mind.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Sure it is!”

Mikasa shook her head. “No, they’re going through enough as it is. I can’t put more on them.”

“They’re hurting you--”

“They’re not hurting me. I’m just a little conflicted. It’s my own fault, and I’ll deal with it.” And she would. 

She wanted the best for Eren, and the best for Armin. She didn’t care either way about Levi, didn’t know him nearly well enough to form an attachment to him, but she knew Eren cared about him. A friend of Eren’s was at least a peripheral positive acquaintance of Mikasa’s, unless they did something to hurt him, and Levi hadn’t. 

Well. Almost hadn’t. 

It might have bothered her a little that Levi was a professor, but that didn’t last long, and she’d even wanted to see Eren with him for a while. But now that Levi let Eren in with a kiss and then pushed him out again, Mikasa was wary. Did he really care about Eren’s feelings, or did he just want some ass? She wouldn’t stand for him taking advantage of Eren. 

But then, Eren did really like him. Of course, he also really liked, possibly even loved Armin, and it seemed like they were getting somewhere if their literal attachment at the hip in the tea house had been any indication. But for Eren to still have Levi in the back of his mind while with Armin… that didn’t sit right either. She knew Armin certainly wouldn’t stand for it, and she couldn’t believe Eren would forge ahead with a relationship, or _anything_ he wasn’t fully committed to. 

He would hurt Armin, that was for sure. And Levi would hurt Eren, if he hadn’t already. 

Mikasa wanted them happy. She wanted them to have relationships they wanted, fall in love with people, live their lives. But she didn’t want them to get hurt. 

She couldn’t meddle though, not anymore. Not after Armin had told her not to get over-involved. She thought it was her job to protect them, but how much protecting was enough?

She tilted the Easy Mac cup over her mouth to catch the last few drops of cheese-flavoured liquid, then tossed it in the trash with Sasha’s. Leaning back against the pillows, Mikasa sighed; Sasha went down with her, still embracing her. 

“So, um… callbacks are on Tuesday.” Sasha was hesitant to mention it, still unsure if Mikasa had made it. 

“Yeah. You got called back?”

“Mm-hm! You too?”

Mikasa nodded, then turned to the side to hide her smile when Sasha cheered. 

“Yes! Let’s both try really hard to get cast.”

“Would you expect any less of me?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t usually try. You’d just succeed. I know you well enough; you’re amazing at this sort of stuff. But I want to see you really try, okay?” She moved closer to Mikasa, squeezing her even tighter. “Show me how much you want it.”

“That didn’t sound like an innuendo at all.”

“You know what I mean!”

\---

“Oh my god.”

Eren had nearly fallen asleep, still in his clothes and half on top of Armin, when she sat up and nearly heaved him off the bed. 

“I got called back!” Armin turned her laptop to face Eren, but he, slightly bleary-eyed, couldn’t make out the words on the screen with her bouncing up and down. No matter; she elaborated on her own. “I got called back for Rocky Horror!”

Eren blinked quickly, trying to take in what he was hearing. “That’s, um…” He stammered a little bit before it clicked. “Oh! Oh wow, that’s great!”

“I thought I didn’t get in, since you and Mikasa got your emails yesterday. But I did!”

“You’re not cast yet. That’s what the callback is; it’s like a second audition.”

“I know that. But, well, it’s dancing. I can dance.”

Eren looked to the side, pointedly staring under Armin’s bed. “I would think so.”

“Don’t be a dick, Eren.”

“I wasn’t!”

Armin shut her laptop and set it in its place on the wide windowsill. “I wonder how we’ll rehearse. I mean, if we all need to know every part, we’ll all have to practice every part. And the show is in, what, two months?”

“I’m expecting Hell Week every week, honestly. They’re going to have to plan it perfectly to rotate us between parts while we practice. Learning lines isn’t so bad -- don’t look at me like that, I did it even with my memory. The real problem will be learning all the blocking. And do you know how many of us will have to do it in heels?”

“Most of us.”

“Exactly.” Eren had worn high heels once and only once, on a dare from Mikasa, and he’d sustained a very embarrassing fracture to his ankle. He was willing to try again, of course; he wouldn’t have tried out if he wasn’t. But he expected it to be his downfall, possibly in the literal sense. 

“Heels aren’t so bad.”

“You’re a _girl_ , though.”

Armin made a face that was halfway between happy and pitying. “I don’t know whether to smack you for the only gendered stereotype I’ve ever heard from you, or kiss you for your emphatic insistence that I am truly the gender I say I am.”

Eren rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’d rather get kissed than smacked, but you should probably do that one. The second thing isn’t even something to congratulate me for.”

“Nope, you’re getting kissed.” She turned over, dropping herself on Eren and pecking his lips. “But don’t stereotype people. Bad Eren.” She smacked his wrist half-heartedly, but then kissed him again, a little deeper this time. 

“Are we going to talk about this?” Eren said, mumbling against her lips.

Armin pulled back. “About callbacks or about the kissing?”

“Kissing.”

“Not yet.” She bumped the tip of her nose against Eren’s, turning his look of distress into a slight smile. “Soon, though.” 

_Please_ , Armin thought, _give me a little more time to pretend this is perfect._

\---

Levi and Petra had just settled down for another attempt at painting when the front door’s lock started jiggling. 

“God damn it, Hanji.” Levi yanked off his latex gloves and made sure Petra was putting her shirt back on before he turned to the door, arms crossed. 

As soon as Hanji came in, he levelled a glare at them. “You know I’m painting. The fuck are you doing here?”

“I texted him,” Petra said. “With your phone. You really should put a password on it, you know.”

Levi opened his mouth to correct her, but realised he didn’t actually know what neutral pronoun Hanji preferred. He wondered if his confusion showed on his face; Hanji murmured, “It’s fine, Levi, don’t bother,” and came in fully. 

“So,” Hanji began, “I heard you have a problem. A boy-toy problem.”

“He’s not my _boy-toy_ ,” Levi bit out. 

“Exactly. And that’s the problem.”

Levi rose from his seat, going to the kitchen for something to drink. He briefly considered breaking out the shitty beer to hopefully get Hanji out, as they couldn't stand the smell, but realised he probably should be sober for this conversation, lest his intoxicated self agree to do something unwise like actually go pining after Eren. “Nothing I can do about it now. He’s got someone else. I told him to go for it; I’m not going to make him wait for me.” He picked out a glass, inspected it briefly for smudges, and filled it with filtered water from the sink. 

“Levi. Levi. Sweetie. Baby. Honey. Fuckhead. Levi.” With every word, Hanji stepped forward, finally placing their hands on Levi’s shoulders and shaking him. “Why the hell did you let him go, you clueless turd?”

Levi glared at them again; they’d nearly spilled his water. “I told you, I’m not going to make him wait for me.” He took a sip; it tasted like sand, and not in the change-the-filter way, but more in the last-time-you-served-water-from-this-sink-you-kissed-him way. 

“What would he be waiting for? You want him!” Hanji was shrieking at this point, and Levi hoped the highly meditative, quiet-obsessed family in the apartment below his weren’t home. 

“I shouldn’t. And don’t give me that ‘you’re not in charge of his grades’ shit. It’s still not morally sound.”

“Since when…” Hanji shook him again “...have you ever cared about doing things that were morally sound? Where’s the Levi I know who pushes the boundaries of everything that doesn’t make him a vile, irredeemably evil piece of shit?”

“A nineteen-year-old ball of fucking sunshine made him realise he wanted to be a good fucking person.”

“Augh!” Hanji threw up their hands and slammed them on the counter next to the sink, hard enough to make the glass of water sitting there jump and rattle as it settled. 

Hanji stared at the glass, as if expecting it to suddenly turn incorporeal and vanish. It didn’t, and they were forced to admit that it was, in fact, extant. “Levi.”

“Yes?”

“You have a glass of water in your hands.”

“I do.”

“Petra has her own water on that little table over there.”

“Does she? I hadn’t noticed.”

“I didn’t ask for water when I came in.”

“No, you didn’t.” Levi’s voice wavered. 

Hanji reached toward the glass and poked their finger into the water. “This is lukewarm. How long has it been here?”

Levi didn’t answer. 

“How. Long. Has. It--”

Petra answered for him. “It’s been there all weekend, I think.”

Hanji turned slowly to face Levi, standing to look down at him, and his eyes were shut tight. Fucking hell, the shitty four-eyes had found him out after all. There was no going back; they would want to hear everything. How could he fuck up something so obvious? He left a giant clue, one so blatant even Hanji could see it. 

“Is that a problem?” Petra asked. “I thought it was a little strange to leave out water so long, but--”

“Oh, it’s not a problem,” Hanji assured. “Just a major break in character.”

They marched Levi over to the couch, hands back on his shoulders, and waved Petra over. 

“Okay, Corporal.” Levi winced at the re-emergence of his hooker name, but Hanji pressed on. “You’re going to tell me what happened, and you’re going to tell me right now.”

Levi still held his own glass of water; his hands started to shake, and he reached for a coaster and set the glass down on the coffee table before he spilled it. 

“I kissed him.”

Hanji, for once, kept their reaction to themself. 

“Thursday afternoon. I had to bring the paintings home, he was there, I asked him to help. So he helped. Of course he would, I’ve got him by the balls. He helped me bring them back, and he came up here. 

“The water… It was supposed to be his. He asked for it when he came in, and we kissed before he could drink it. I…” Levi choked a little, trying not to let his voice break. “I couldn’t put it away. I’m so fucked up.” He leaned forward, dropping his head into his hands. “How sick is that? I leave his fucking glass of water out because it’s the only proof he was even here, like I’m some sort of stalker who collects things he’s touched. But I still can’t make myself okay with the idea of fucking him even though he so badly wants me to. 

“And I want it too. Between putting the paintings down and leaving so I could get to my office hours, I spent fifteen minutes kissing him and five telling him I couldn’t date him and he shouldn’t wait for me. And the whole time, I was torn between wanting to fuck him right there on the counter and never wanting him to touch me again.

"And then-- and then!" Levi stood up, beginning to pace. "I get to his Anatomy for the Artist class, I'm modelling because someone cancelled at the last minute, I'm having a panic attack for god-only-knows what reason, the kind of panic attack where I count ceiling tiles and seriously wonder if I remembered to shower because I can feel sweat on the backs of my knees. He tells me he's going to ask his best friend to go out with him." Levi stopped in front of the largest painting in the room, suddenly feeling the urge to put a hole through it, to destroy something, when Petra stepped between him and the painting, and directed him back to the couch, sitting on the side of him not taken by Hanji, an arm thrown around his shoulders. 

"I told him..." Levi sighed. "I told him he should do it. Told him to 'have fun'. And the worst part is, I meant it. I told him to go be with-- with her, because I really wanted him to. He'll be happy with her. He'd be fucking miserable with me." 

"But you're fucking miserable without him," Hanji said. They grabbed his hand, trying to comfort him. 

"I'm not, though. I'm a little messed up over it, a little shaky, but I'm not miserable. I'm happy for him." He let a hollow laugh escape him. "Isn't that just fucked up? I want him, more than I've ever wanted anyone, and he wants me, and I can't have him because of my own reservations and his own... taken-ness, and I'm happy for him. And even though I'm happy for him, it still hurts." 

"That's called heartbreak, sweetie." Petra rubbed his back, smiling softly. 

"I am not fucking heartbroken."

"You are, but that's okay. You can admit it, there's no shame in it."

"But I'm not," Levi asserted. 

Hanji nodded, agreeing with Petra. "You are."

"Nope." 

" _Levi_ ," both his friends said at once. 

"Fuck off, I'm not heartbroken. That would require me to have a heart in the first place.”

Petra pressed her free hand against Levi's chest, palm flat against the pocket of his white shirt. "Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Yup, still beating. Just in pain. Beating faster now; are you angry?" 

"Yes." 

Well suck it up, Mr. Heartbreak," Hanji ordered. "Now tell me; how does this boy-toy feel about polyamory?" 

"Not you too." He groaned, leaning back against the couch. Levi turned his eyes up to the ceiling to avoid looking at the two people staring at him. "I don't know how he feels about it." 

"Ask him." 

"I'm still not ready!" he yelled. "I can't do anything with him. I know eventually I'm going to want him more than I care about my morals, but I'm not there yet. And even if I was, how the fuck do I ask something like that? 'Hey, I noticed you're into more than one person at once, want to try being vaguely committed to both of them at the same time'? Fuck no!" 

"I could talk to him," Petra offered. "Mention I have three boyfriends, see what he thinks about it." 

"No. Just don't. Let me move on."

"You said it yourself," Hanji said. "You're not going to move on. You're going to keep wanting him until you snap and have nothing holding you back but his girlfriend and his permission. What if he wants you both?" 

"If he wanted something like that, he wouldn't have made it so clear he was going to choose only one of us." 

Petra resumed rubbing Levi's back. "Not necessarily. He might be so used to the socially-constructed paradigm of the monogamous relationship that he doesn't realise polyamory is an option." 

"You sound like a SWAG course." 

"A what?" 

"Study of Women And Gender," Hanji provided. "SWAG. It's what we call it at Wall. But I agree with Petra. He might not know anything about polyamory. You won't know until you ask."

"And I won't ask until I have something to do with the answer." Levi said it with enough finality that Hanji and Petra let him be on his decision, though they shared a look out of his eyesight that clearly stated they thought he was wrong to wait. 

\---

Eren’s Monday morning alarm woke him at 8:30. His first thought as he reached for his phone was that his hand and head were freezing, so he dragged the nearest blanket up and cocooned himself completely, swiping off the alarm when his hand was once again encased fully in the warmth of his bed. 

An e-mail from the college, with the subject “Priority news Please read”, awaited him. 

_Due to inclement weather, Wall College academic and administrative offices will be closed today, Monday, February 10. Classes will be held as scheduled based on the discretion of the professor and essential personnel are to report as scheduled._

Eren locked his phone and lifted his head, shivering against the cold air of the dorm room. He looked outside the window; a blanket of white covered everything in sight, including the street and sidewalks. 

“Nnnnope,” he said, and he snuggled back inside his cocoon. 

“Same,” Armin replied, from deep within the pile of blankets. She had dealt with this information about an hour earlier, and came to the same conclusion; no matter what any professors said, she and Eren would definitely be skipping class. 

Armin would probably still go to her night class, assuming it was still running and the streets and sidewalks got cleared before then, but even though she was pretty sure Anatomy was still on at this point, she had no intentions of getting out of bed any time soon. 

Eren was asleep again in minutes, and Armin snuggled closer, getting as much out of Eren’s abnormally high body heat as she could. At some point, they would probably have to get up, if only to eat, and she’d throw a damp towel over the thermostat to trick it into getting the heater running. Until then, she had her own human space heater, and she couldn’t be happier. 

Or could she?

Armin shook her head, trying to dispel her thoughts without waking Eren. She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about how she was the second choice. She didn’t want to think about how she would have to fight for Eren’s affections and attention over Levi. 

This was the worst, the absolute _worst_ time to be worrying about a relationship, of all things. There were far more pressing matters, like her classes, and the grade point average she needed to keep for her merit scholarship to stay in place, and her relative health, and her grandfather’s relative health, and how and when and to whom she would come out, and how they would react, and where she would go from there in her journeys as a trans woman, and all manner of things that weren’t the precise extent to which Eren felt romantically attached to her. 

And yet, that was as present in her mind as anything else, sometimes shoving its way into her other thoughts. Get your homework done now, so you can spend more time with Eren. Button your coat -- if you get sick, you can’t kiss Eren. Tell people you’re a girl soon, so Eren can call you his girlfriend. Do you think Eren cares if you don’t particularly want to have a vagina? 

Across the hall, Mikasa and Sasha were probably fast asleep on Mikasa’s bed, having passed out there the night before. They wouldn’t stir until Mikasa’s dining hall shift at eleven. Did they ever have to worry about this sort of thing? Mikasa didn’t, surely not; she wasn’t interested in people like that. Sasha, though; where did her desire to befriend Mikasa come from? Was she hoping for something she couldn’t have, and making the best of a terribly awkward situation? Or were they just _comfortable_ with each other, in a way that only people who fell hard and fast into a friendship could be? 

The way Armin and Eren used to be. 

Eren stirred, moving a hand to Armin’s cheek. “You’re shivering.” He kissed the top of her head. 

“I’m cold. I’ll do the towel thing.”

“I can do it if you want.”

“Nah.” Armin shifted the blankets around, searching for an exit from their nest; Eren hissed as the cold air hit his skin. A small face towel, long since dried out, hung from a Command hook directly over the thermostat; Armin took it down and left the room, heading for one of the bathrooms. 

Technically, there was a women’s bathroom and a men’s one, but as neither boasted any indicative urinals, every year someone on the Shiga house council went around and covered up all the bathroom signs, and they became essentially unisex. Armin knew, however, that the one to the left of her and Eren’s room was originally designated the women’s bathroom, and so that was the one she’d always used, if only for her own peace of mind. 

Armin looked at her reflection while she wet the towel. Her hair was all over the place, staticky and probably tangled, but other than that she looked okay for having just woken up. No dark circles under her eyes, despite that she hadn’t gotten to sleep until the time was less “late at night” and more “early in the morning”, too busy staring at Eren’s face in the slight orange glow of a snowy night to get tired. 

Mikasa came in and took the sink next to her. “Morning, Armin.” 

“You’re up early for a snow day.”

“Sasha wanted breakfast.” Mikasa shrugged and splashed some water on her face. “Anatomy’s cancelled, by the way.”

“I wasn’t going anyway.”

“Really? Armin Arlert, skipping class. That’s a new one.”

Armin wrung out the towel, her fingers prickling from the icy tap water. “Rather stay in bed.”

“Are you sharing with Eren again?”

“He’s warm,” Armin said, defensive. She didn’t want it getting around that she and Eren were together, especially when she wasn’t really sure if they were herself; but this was Mikasa, so she wasn’t going to lie. 

“Well, I wish you the best.” Mikasa headed for the shower.

Armin returned to her room, hanging the towel back over the thermostat sensor and tunneling into the blanket nest. Once back in Eren’s arms, she tried to kiss him, but he moved away. 

“I have morning breath,” he explained. 

“Keep your mouth closed, then.”

One innocent good morning kiss turned into more, turned into forgetting about morning breath and kissing deeper, Eren rolling on top of Armin for a better angle. The heater turned on and Eren pushed the blankets off partway, knowing that within moments the room would be toasty warm. 

Armin’s tongue slipped into his mouth, and his entire world narrowed down to the slide of wet against wet. 

He slid his hands into Armin’s hair, and she followed, curling her fingers around his until he closed his hands into fists, the action making him pull a little at her hair. She moved again, dropping a hand on the back of Eren’s neck, pressing down, pulling him in, as if they could get any closer at all. 

Armin wedged her leg in between Eren’s, and he realised they _could_ get closer. 

Eren pulled back from their kiss for only a moment; as soon as his lips left Armin’s, she whispered “please” before he could ask and pulled him down again. She lifted her hips, and had Eren been a little more clear-headed he might have started thanking every deity he could think of that he slept in only boxers and a t-shirt, for he could feel the press of her rough flannel pyjama pants almost as if he was wearing nothing at all. Armin moved again, and Eren moved with her; they shared a moan, their lips still connected by the barest touch. 

“Armin,” he whispered. “Armin. Armin. Arm--” Eren gasped loudly, and he unwittingly pulled at her hair. 

Armin was floating, her pulse racing, her skin tingling; she was sure their snow day was about to become a laundry day, but she didn’t care. Eren was hissing out her name like it was the only one he knew. Sudden tension at her scalp made her toes curl, and she pushed their lips back together to muffle her whine. 

They’d have to talk about this. But for the moment, they moved against each other, slow for the lazy morning but reaching for the end, and when they finally got there, neither knowing who went over first, they collapsed against each other. After a few more lazy kisses, they sank back into sleep, content to just deal with the clean-up, as well as the feelings, later.


	11. Shiver With Antici...potato

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Game of Spoons. Too many assholes in the studio. Symbolic music, ew, gross. Callbacks happen, and the author is in way over their head. The saga of representation continues.

Lunch on Tuesday was buffalo chicken wraps and three different kinds of soup, which meant that when Eren got to the dining hall at noon both of the lines stretched around the room, meeting in the middle. 

Armin waved him over to the table anyway, and Mikasa picked up one of three wraps from Sasha’s plate, lofting in the air. Sasha, betrayed, tried to climb over her to get her wrap back, but Mikasa starfished her hand against Sasha’s face and pushed her away, holding her at arm’s length until Eren navigated his way through the tables and grabbed the wrap out of Mikasa’s hand. 

Sasha crossed her arms and pouted. “See if I ever share my Easy Mac with you again!” 

“You shared your Easy Mac?” Connie said around a mouthful of chicken. “You don’t even let _me_ have it.” 

Eren squeezed in a free chair between Mikasa and Armin. He shoved his backpack and a shipping tube full of sketch paper under the seat, and dug in to Sasha’s wrap. 

Sasha levelled a dark look at the trio. “I’ve been betrayed by the Jager household. This is war. No-one is safe; you will perish, your allies will perish, your livestock will become my dinner, your houses will be pillaged for food and then burned to the ground--”

Connie stood, lofting his spoon into the air. “All hail the Potato Queen!”

Armin stood, her own spoon in hand, ready to defend her best friend. “All hail the House of Rage!” They duelled it out, spoons clashing across the table. 

“Go, my noble knight!” Eren shouted. Next to him, Mikasa fell forward onto the table, shaking with laughter. “Defend the Honourable House of Rage! Remember our motto: Mikasa es su casa!”

Mikasa emerged from her laughing fit to elbow Eren’s side. 

Jean, watching from the head of the table, pointed out the flaw in such a motto: “So you’re saying they can totally just take over your sister whenever.” 

“Shut UP, Kirschtein.”

With a dramatic flourish, Armin knocked Connie’s hand aside and jabbed the business end of her spoon towards Connie’s abdomen. It didn’t make contact, but he doubled over anyway, clutching at a non-existent wound and groaning in fake pain. 

“I’ve been hit! Noooo-- I’m sorry, my queen!” Connie draped himself over Sasha, a hand thrown over his eyes. It was the stage-death of a truly talented actor pulling out all the stops for unnecessary drama. “I could not avenge your honour, nor your buffalo chicken. Please, forgive me.” He went limp, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. 

“Victory!” Armin cheered. “For House Rage!” She held her spoon aloft once more; Eren and Mikasa started banging on the table, chanting her name. 

“You guys are ridiculous,” Jean said, without any bite. 

“Your face is ridiculous,” Eren shot back. Jean started wiggling his lip ring with his tongue and Eren, thoroughly disgusted, threw up his hands to block it out of his vision. “Douchebag. Where’s your boyfriend?”

“With his other friends. He has those, unlike you.”

“You’re one to talk; you sit with us every day and some of us don’t even like you.”

“Pretty sure you’re the only one who claims not to like me.” Jean stood and picked up his empty soup bowl. He held it over Eren’s head and said something that sounded like garbled Latin, then headed to the finally short line for seconds. 

“Motherfucker!” Eren threw his hands up and waved them, as if he was trying to clear the air above him. “Don’t give me any of your Satanic shit!”

Mikasa grabbed his hands, trying to still him. “He’s not a Satanist, Eren. Calm down. He said ‘to boldly go where no-one has gone before’, not a curse.”

“He can boldly shove it up his ass.”

“Eren,” Armin said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t want to pull this one out, but I am your roommate, and have been since September. I wouldn’t go whining about Jean if I were you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You talk in your sleep, you know.”

“You _wouldn’t_ \--”

Sasha and Connie leaned across the table once more, scrambling forward to hear what Armin had to say. She bit her lips together, shaking her head. 

“I hate you all.” Eren stood, cramming the last of his lunch into his mouth, and grabbed his things. He nudged Armin’s head, then headed for the stairs. 

A flash of yellow caught his eye, and he hesitated on the first step. 

It was that time in the semester when the Free Box started filling with half-decent rejected materials; slightly-worn clothes, the odd lamp, maybe even a pair of shoes. Today, it boasted a lump of bright yellow fabric. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a dress, slightly stained and with a torn shoulder strap, but still very much salvageable. 

Most interestingly, it looked to be about Armin’s size. 

He didn’t know if she’d like it, and hell, she’d just threatened to reveal Eren’s second most well-kept secret; did she even deserve this? 

But. 

_But._

He could fix it. He’d sewn up enough of his own clothes, having torn them after picking fights with people he didn’t stand a chance against. He wouldn’t have been able to make something like this from scratch, but fixing a little tear and covering up a stain -- he could do it. 

And if she did like it… 

He grabbed the dress, thinking of where to hide it until he got around to fixing it. Maybe under his socks.

\---

Knowing one was making a mistake did not always stop one from doing it anyway. It certainly didn’t stop Eren from returning to the empty studio once again on Tuesday in the early afternoon, across from the _other_ studio, the full one where Levi held his Hyperrealism class. Eren had his headphones in, blasting Pandora loud enough to drown out anything else, and he very specifically did not look across the hall to see if the studio doors were open. He set up his Illustration homework at a drawing horse in the middle of the room, facing away from the two sets of double-doors at either end of the room. 

It was too soon to make contact. Still in the grey space of _are we good friends dating or are we good friends rolling around together with no committed attachment?_ with Armin, and still locked into a mutual attraction with Levi, Eren knew that any contact with Levi would end up with Eren cheating, definitely cheating, on whatever it was he had with Armin. 

That said, he couldn’t just ignore his homework, and this was his only chance to use the ink that was kept in the cabinets of this studio. This particular studio. The Illustration studio. Which just so happened to be across the hall from the Advanced Painting studio. 

Well, he could come in after midnight, after Callbacks, and stay until the wee hours of the morning… or he could spend that time cuddling with Armin. 

Priorities, right?

Besides, Eren needed to learn some self-control. And so far, he was controlling himself rather well. He hadn’t looked at the door even once in the three hours he’d spent in the studio. 

In the lull between two songs, Eren heard the stomping of feet that signalled the end of Levi’s class. He should finish up soon, lest Levi decide to stop in after his office hours. 

Lead us not into temptation, and all that. 

But… he wasn’t finished. He still had more ink to lay down, and he had to clean up after that, and damn he really did want a smoothie afterwards and what if Levi asked to go get one together? 

Eren wanted to rush his way through the rest of the ink, but then the whole illustration would look sloppy, and he was better than that, damn it. So he continued to take his time, hoping that Levi came to the same conclusion as him, that avoidance was best unless absolutely impossible until such a time as they got over each other. He kept up that hope for the full hour of Levi’s office hours. 

Plugged into music as loud as Eren’s was, he didn’t hear the footsteps. Facing away from the door, he saw no-one come in. He didn’t realise anyone had disturbed his self-imposed solitude until a shadow fell over his page, and he sucked in a gasp that might have been overdramatic had it not been intended as a reaction to several consecutive realisations. 

1\. There was someone else in the studio.   
2\. That someone was directly behind Eren, looking at his work.   
3\. Whoever it was, they were still coming closer.   
4\. And they smelled like paint thinner and disinfectant. 

“Eren.” The word cut through Eren’s headphones, Levi’s voice slicing like swords, ringing in his ears despite Tegan and Sara singing at top volume; _you clung to self-restraint, you followed the plan, you put the brakes on this_. 

“Levi.” Eren chewed on his tongue to stop himself from saying something he’d regret, like “get the fuck away from me” or “fuck me on the floor.” He didn’t pull his headphones out, didn’t even lower the volume, didn’t look at Levi. It took every ounce of self-control he had, but he kept his eyes on the page. 

“Are you happy?”

Eren turned his head finally, squinting, face pinched in a clear “what the fuck?” One earbud fell out. He shouldn’t have turned, because Levi looked _good_ , but did he ever not?

“With Armin. Are you happy with her?”

Someone not intimately acquainted with Levi’s subtly expressive eyes would not have noticed, but Eren could see he was sincere in his question. “Yeah.”

Levi’s eyelids fluttered just slightly, and he breathed in, his nose flaring. He looked, dare Eren think it, sad, and out-of-place. He curled his hands into fists, then flexed his fingers, and shoved his hands into his pockets. 

He was nervous. 

“Good for you…” Levi didn’t say the _I guess_ , the little modifying phrase to turn a congratulations into an accusation, but Eren heard it anyway, and yeah, it hurt. 

It hurt. Levi was the one who told him to do this in the first place. Levi was the one who called off whatever they could have become, and Eren respected his reasons, even if he didn’t agree with them, but for Levi to come in here with badly-suppressed puppy dog eyes like he was begging Eren to take him back, well. That wasn’t okay. 

Eren was happy with Armin. Eren loved Armin, and was glad, in a way, that Levi had turned him down, because he could have this chance with her. Whatever they became, it was sure to be incredible, if Armin and Eren’s friendship thus far was anything to judge by. Levi couldn’t take his “don’t wait for me” back now. 

“Regretting something, Levi?” Eren didn’t mean to sound derisive, but he did anyway. Chewing on his tongue had been a good idea; why did he stop?

Levi’s eyebrows flicked up, and he closed his eyes, jerking his head back slightly, as if Eren had physically punched him in the face. “Wow.” His voice dripped with sarcasm, more than Eren had ever heard from his usual monotone. Levi nodded a few times, then cocked his head to the side. “Go fuck yourself.”

Eren snorted. “Don’t have to. You’re not the only one who wants to fuck me.” Shit, bite your tongue, _bite your tongue_ \-- “Oh, right, you don’t want to. Forgot.” _That was the WRONG thing to say._

A hand closed around the front of Eren’s shirt, gripping at his low neckline, and Levi pulled him off of the stool he sat on. Eren stumbled as he was forced to stand, and a flailing foot kicked the other stool, on which rested his red solo cup of ink. There was only maybe an inch of liquid in the bottom of the cup, more than enough for outlining a few illustrations, but the cup tipped over and bounced enough to splash the ink onto both of their pants. 

Eren’s old, faded blue jeans already had stains on them, some far worse than ink. Levi’s white jeans, on the other hand, had been pristine, and Eren dragged his eyes away from the spreading black stain to look Levi in the eye, terrified of what would happen when the professor noticed what he’d done. It hadn’t escaped Eren’s notice that Levi and everything associated with him was, without fail, immaculately clean. He didn’t know what Levi’s reaction would be to ruining his pants, but Eren had a sinking feeling in his gut that told him it would be rather severe. 

“I’m sorry,” Eren gasped, out of breath as if Levi had grabbed him around the neck. 

Levi was very still. He looked at Eren with a cold rage in his dull grey eyes. Eren thought of steel, and of Arctic ice; he swallowed with great force against the tightening of his throat. 

“I-I didn’t mean to--”

“Didn’t mean to what? Say what you said? Piss me off? You’re a piece of shit, brat.”

Their faces were close, so close, but this wasn’t like Levi’s kitchen. They weren’t going to smash their lips together in a release of built-up sexual tension. More likely, they’d end up hitting each other, and then they’d end up wrestling on the ground right in the middle of the puddle of ink splattered there. 

Levi furrowed his eyebrows. “Why are my pants...” He looked down, and he shoved Eren away, gasping aloud, his hands in the air. Most of the ink had landed all over his left pant leg, and it had spread since Eren looked away, turning the denim an uneven gray; the right leg had mostly little spots of ink, and one large splotch near the top of his boot. A few drops slid down the shiny white leather, leaving wobbly parallel lines of gray in their wake. There was even a little spatter of ink, just pinpricks of it, on his shirt. 

“I’m sorry!” Eren cried out. “I can help you wash them!” Not that he really knew that much about getting ink out of white clothing, but--

“...wet,” Levi finished. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and with one last look at Eren, he backed out of the room, turning around and breaking into a run once he reached the hall. 

Eren sat down on his stool, head in his hands. Levi had fucked up -- coming here in the first place, especially if he was going to look like he wanted Eren back, was his first mistake; grabbing Eren with the intention to turn their fight physical had been the second. But Eren had made mistakes too, in insulting Levi twice and hurting him more than he was already hurt. 

What he didn’t know was that Levi, reaching his office at the end of the hall, locked himself inside and slid down the door, and he curled up around himself as he came to terms with his own mistakes, and shivered as the ink on his clothes soaked in further. 

\---

Callbacks were, in a word, hell. 

It was held in a large, underground dance studio in the performing arts building, and was essentially a first rehearsal, during which Ymir taught a slightly edited version of what would become the Time Warp dance to thirty or so “Potential Transylvanians”. She combined Riff Raff’s, Columbia’s, and the Phantoms’ parts of the song into one fluid dance, much to the distress of several who had hoped to not have to learn Columbia’s tap dance so early on. 

Eren was one such distressed dancer. Between his leftover distraction in thinking about his fight with Levi, and his own natural average-human level of clumsiness, he fell over his own feet the first few times, at one point crashing into a very startled girl in front of him. On about the tenth try, with Annie’s help, he managed to get through all of the spins; however, he felt a little light-headed after that run-through of the dance ended. 

Krista watched from a folding chair in the back of the room, taking down notes in a spiral-bound notebook. When Ymir called a fifteen-minute break after nearly two straight hours of dancing, Krista stood from her chair and the pair huddled together, whispering over what Krista had written down. 

Reading from the lists they’d made, Ymir split everyone into groups of four, and gave them all a half-hour to practice in their groups. At the end of that half-hour, groups would perform in a smaller, adjacent room. “You can leave once we dismiss you from your callback,” she said. “Unless we ask you specifically to stay back, of course.”

Eren’s group consisted of Annie and two other people he didn’t know. Mikasa was with a group of strangers, all seniors, and she had a sour look on her face; she’d seen them try (or rather, not try at all) to dance, and was the opposite of impressed. Armin shared a group with the girl Eren had stumbled over and a taller boy, and the two of them tried to discreetly brush up against each other, as if they were together but didn’t want anyone to know. Armin knew the feeling. Jean was also in her group, and he ushered them over to a corner of the room to practice. 

“I didn’t think this would be your kind of thing, Jean,” Armin said. 

“Are you kidding me? I love musicals.” He smiled at Armin, then started to lead the group through the steps. He sang softly while they danced, just loud enough for the group to hear and not so loud that they’d disturb other groups. 

When they’d first met, Armin had been intimidated by Jean; by his rough clothing, his facial piercings, his neck tattoo, even his half-bleached hair. That hadn’t lasted long; only long enough for Armin to seriously worry the first time he’d argued with Eren. But she quickly got to know him, not well enough that she could have guessed Jean would be a potential resource for unloading all her trans baggage, but enough so that she knew she could never be afraid of him. He was like a secretly overprotective punk-styled puppy. So ever since Mikasa had suggested Armin talk to him, she’d just been looking for an opening. 

“Hey, Armin. Do the spins. I think you might be off-beat.”

Jean hummed the tune while Armin spun out, crossing about ten feet of floor space. 

“That was good. Make sure you keep on it when we show the directors.” 

Jean listened to the kind of loud, somewhat cacophonous music his taste in clothing implied, but he also branched out, and his all-time favourite song was “Lady Madonna” by the Beatles. His pets back at home included a snake named Horse and a dog named Waffles, and Jean had named them both. He shouted a “fuck yeah!” every time the Shiga-and-Shina breakfast spread included veggie omelettes. He had the gentlest smile Armin had ever seen, in those rare moments when he smiled. 

All this, Armin had learned in the months since first meeting Jean the previous April, when she, Eren, and Mikasa had first visited Wall College and stayed on campus as prospective students. 

Armin had been hosted by Reiner, and Eren had ended up right next door, hosted by Jean. That had been an utter disaster. Eren found out Jean was going to minor in art, not major, because he was worried about money; Eren called him a coward, and they hadn’t stopped yelling at each other until Reiner barged in and told them to “shut up or switch prospies”. 

In the end, Armin had stayed with Jean, and Eren had stayed with Reiner, which ended up being a better deal anyway. Reiner’s reasons for minoring in art were related to level of interest rather than economic worries so he didn’t fight with Eren, and Jean’s experience waffling between English and Government majors gave him at least a little experience with the History classes Armin wanted to know more about. 

Armin, naive Armin, hadn’t known how to talk to him; she’d kept her eyes down, finding it easier to string words together when she wasn’t looking at the silver hoop in his lower lip or the bar through his eyebrow or the thorny inked vines creeping up the left side of his neck. “I don’t know how you can be so interested in Government, looking like that,” she’d said, and immediately wanted to bury her head in the sand for the rest of her life. She had looked up at him finally, stuttering out an apology. 

At first he had looked taken aback, maybe a little insulted, but once he’d seen the fear in her eyes, he’d laughed. “How I look is exactly the reason I’m interested in Government.”

The next morning, Jean had embarrassed himself in every way possible when he’d tried to flirt with Mikasa. She’d pretended not to notice, content to let him keep making a fool of himself until, during dinner the second night, she announced that Amoeba, Wall’s cultural club for asexuals, was meeting that evening. Jean had dropped his head down onto the table, and responded to all attempts to rouse him with an embarrassed grunt. 

Since then, Jean had become an inextricable part of their group, in some ways feeling responsible for protecting the first-years. Armin suspected he was also still trying to make up for what he’d done to Mikasa, but she hadn’t even been angry in the first place, just amused. 

Armin was shaken out of her memories when Jean called for another run-through of the dance; they had five minutes left, and he thought their group was just about ready to volunteer to go first. 

Catching a glimpse of Eren across the room being berated by Annie, and Mikasa not far away looking ready to murder the rest of her group, Armin couldn’t agree more. They’d gotten through their group practice with minimal issues. 

True to their expectations, Ymir and Krista called for a volunteer to go first just as they finished, and Jean raised his hand and led the group over. 

The dance passed by in a rush of movement and music, and before Armin knew it they were done, and on the way out of the small practice room, back to the larger dance studio where the other groups continued to practice until the inevitable last second. She couldn’t even remember how well she’d done. 

Hannah and Franz, the other two members of their group, headed home; Jean preferred to wait for Marco to finish. Armin stayed as well, hoping to walk back to the dorm with Eren and Mikasa, and now she could even get to speak with Jean. 

“Hey, Jean? Could we talk?”

Jean turned his smile upon Armin. “Sure. Privately?”

Armin nodded, and Jean led her out of the room and down the hall, looking for an empty, unlocked room. The computer lab was, for once, deserted, and they took up residence in the back with the door closed. 

“What’s up?” Jean asked. He hopped up to an empty space on the counter below the windows, next to the printers; Armin sat cross-legged next to him. 

“Mikasa told me to talk to you. I’m…” She sighed. It didn’t get easier, did it? “I’m transgender.”

Jean nodded, indicating she should continue. 

“She said you could… help? I don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t say I can help, exactly, but Mikasa was right in saying you could talk to me. I’m not trans, though.”

“She mentioned that.” Armin said. She unfolded her legs and brought her knees up, resting her chin on them. 

“Did she mention what I _am_?” Jean asked. Armin shook her head. “Do you know what ‘intersex’ means?” Armin shook her head again. “Well, I’m gonna have to throw some unfortunate medical terminology at you, you ready?” Armin nodded. Jean looked up to the ceiling for a moment, trying to remember it all. “Intersexism is when a person naturally has reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit what is typically considered male or female.”

“So like a hermaphrodite?”

Jean squinted. “...Sort of. Hermaphroditism is when a person has both typically male and female external sexual anatomy, which is incredibly rare in humans and not quite what’s going on with me. I was just ambiguous at birth, but I was raised as a boy and I more or less identify as one now.”

“More or less?”

Jean smiled his gentle smile. “That’s a story for another day, young genderfuck-in-training. Basically, I don’t have exactly the issue you have, but I understand a little of what you’re going through and if I don’t get it well enough, I do know some people I can point you to. What do you want to talk about?”

“Well, I…” Amin ran a hand through her hair. This was _hard_ , even if she was talking to someone who could at least kind of get it. “I keep forgetting to call myself by the right pronouns, even in my head.”

“I’ve been told it helps to practice in front of a mirror. Am I right in thinking you’re a woman? She/her pronouns?”

Armin nodded. 

“ _She, her_ \-- are you using a different name?” 

“No, Armin is fine.”

“Okay. Normally you’d say ‘she, her,’ and then your new name, but if you’re not changing that… maybe ‘she, her, woman’?”

“She, her, woman… she, her, woman…” Armin turned to the window, catching a muted reflection of herself in the dark glass. “She, her, woman.” She repeated it a few more times. “I don’t know if it’s working, but I feel better.”

“It might take a while to really set in-- it might take forever. But don’t give up. And it’s never your fault; you’ve lived all your formative years being told you were a boy, and that shit sticks.”

“Eren always remembers. As soon as I told him, it was like he flipped a switch. He’s never once called me a boy since.”

“Eren’s… special.” The way Jean said it didn’t indicate it was a good or bad sort of _special_. “He can’t remember when a damn assignment is due without it plugged into his phone, but he can remember absolutely anything about a person he cares about, without fail. It’s admirable, in a way. I don’t know how he manages it. But don’t hold yourself up to that standard. You’re still you, no matter what your thoughts default to. Do you have anything else you want to talk about?”

“Yeah. I’m, well, obviously not out to a lot of people, but I’d like to be. I just want to know if it’s… safe.”

“If there’s anywhere in the world where it’s safe to be transgender, I’d say that place is Wall College. In reality, it’s not perfect, but if someone tries to fuck with you you’re going to have ten more people supporting you. It’s more likely someone will fuck up due to ignorance than outright disrespect.”

For the first time, Armin was hopeful. “So you think I can come out to our friends?”

Jean bit his lip, pulling his lip ring into his mouth. A soft clicking sound came from his mouth; when he opened his mouth wide, breathing in slowly while he picked his words, Armin noticed his tongue was pierced too, and realised he’d been hitting the two piercings against each other. “I think you’ll have to expect a few uncomfortable questions, possibly some insulting ones, because as open to just about everything as Sasha and Connie are, they’re also really, really behind the times in terms of what they already know. I can’t think of anyone else who you’ll have issues with. I don’t think I know all your friends though.” 

It was something, though, and Armin felt a little more positive about the possibility of coming out sometime soon. 

It was already past nine-thirty at that point, and after a little more conversation they made their way back out to the lounge area near the dance studio. Mikasa was already seated in an armchair there, her group having gone two slots after Armin’s, and she glared into middle-distance while her headphones blasted calming instrumentals loud enough for the sound to escape into the room. The rest of her group-mates were no-where to be found. 

Armin took the other armchair, and Jean laid down on a short couch, his legs hanging off past the edge. Mikasa looked up when they sat down and, correctly assuming they’d had the conversation she expected them to have, she gave Armin a thumbs-up and a questioning brow; she returned the thumbs-up with a little smile, and Mikasa went back to her music and to glaring at the floor. 

Connie exited the room a half-hour later, followed by Marco and the others in their group. Jean and Marco left, while Connie took up the place on the couch Jean had just vacated, and Sasha came out with the next group. Sasha and Connie left together, with Sasha promising to come over to Mikasa’s room before midnight with her stuff and more Easy Mac. 

“For fuck’s sake, is Annie really going to make them go last?” Mikasa mumbled. “Eren’s not _that_ bad.”

Sure enough, at about eleven-thirty, Eren and Annie’s group filed out, Eren positively drenched in sweat, almost as much as Bertholdt had been after his and Reiner’s group had gone in the second slot. Mikasa and Armin stood, intending to get a move on home, but Eren threw his arms over their shoulders and groaned loudly. 

“Carry me. I can’t walk any more.” He whined. 

“Get off, you big baby,” Mikasa said. She shoved him off, and he fell fully onto Armin, who pushed him off as well, letting him stumble a little before righting himself. 

“You guys are mean. Almost as mean as Annie.”

Annie turned back, having heard him even from across the room. “I just made sure you got into the show. You should be grateful.” She smirked. “I’m sure you’ll make a great Columbia someday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song eren listened to during his and levi’s fight is “[drove me wild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfNwfgABrX4)” by tegan and sara. 
> 
> i got some comments last chapter wondering whether levi and armin are going to get better acquainted. the answer is yes, but i’m not yet sure how close they’ll become, and i thought why not get some opinions on it? 
> 
> i could have them as slightly awkward acquaintances in a “we’re sleeping with the same guy and should be civil to one another” kind of way, or i could have them become friends, or i could turn this thing into a threesome (which i am 110% all-too-happy to provide), or i could do any number of other options that i’m sure exist but are not coming to mind right now. tell me what you’d like to see! any sort of bond between armin and levi is still a long ways off, but it’s good to have a direction early on, no?


	12. Trust Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Casting results are in. Mikasa gets squished. Levi gets an individual plot and continues to be A Responsible Adult. Some hearts are broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> update on the vote from last chapter: most of those who voiced an opinion were in favour of a levi/eren/armin threesome, so as of right now that’s the direction i’m going in. i’ll definitely be taking care to develop levi and armin’s relationship as much as eren’s relationships with both of them as the fic continues.

_Good Afternoon, Humans;_

_We regret to inform you that you have not been cast in this year’s production of The Rocky Horror Show. We appreciate your enthusiasm, and we hope to see you try again next year._

_With love from Transsexual,_

_Krista and Ymir_

\---

“Aw…” Armin closed the email, beginning Sulk Mode.

“You didn’t get in either?” Eren asked. He had the same email open on his phone. 

“No. We’re never going to see Mikasa this semester, are we?” She clicked over to Facebook, seeing cheerful statuses from Sasha, Reiner, and Jean, and more subdued and informative ones from Mikasa and Annie, that they’d all been cast. 

“We’ve got our time in the Studio. I mean, assuming rehearsal doesn’t end up being on Wednesdays.”

“It’s not.” Armin turned her laptop to face Eren; Mikasa had posted the rehearsal schedule and tagged them both, saying _Add this to the list of times I regrettably will not be free. Starting to wonder if this was a good idea…_ “She’s still got Saturday night open, I think.” 

“At least it’s something.” Eren fell back against his pillows, dropping his phone somewhere around the foot of his bed. “Guess it’ll be mostly you and me.”

“Guess so.” 

Eren’s phone trilled, and he nudged it closer with his foot until he could grab it in the tips of his fingers. “Right. Work.” He sat up, and Armin followed him out. “Annie’s going to kill me when she finds out I didn’t make it after all the help she gave me.”

\---

Across the hall, Sasha and Mikasa sang their way through the Rocky Horror score, with the film soundtrack playing from Mikasa’s laptop. 

“I never knew you could be so fun,” Sasha said after the last track ended.

Mikasa gave her a sidelong glance, eyes narrowing. “Oh?”

“I-I didn’t mean--” Sasha stammered. She threw up her hands in front of her, waving them. “I just meant…”

“No, I understand. I didn’t know either. I’ve been different lately, I think.”

“Don’t think that you have to change for me. I wanted to be your friend before all this.” She waved her hand around Mikasa’s room, indicating two corsets and several pairs of torn stockings on her desk, four pairs of stiletto heels fresh from the thrift store on the floor, a recycling bin full of empty Easy Mac containers and Dr. Pepper bottles, and the laptop looping back to the beginning of the Rocky Horror soundtrack -- _at the late-night double-feature picture show_...

“I’m not changing for you.” In truth, Mikasa didn’t think she had changed at all. Sure, she wasn’t as closed-off in front of her more distant friends as she had once been, but then again, she was getting a little more familiar with all of them, not just Sasha. Then again, she had already attributed the credit to Sasha for bringing out this side of her, or at least bringing it out farther than her little circle of Eren-Armin-Mikasa, in the first place. “I’m just showing a different part of myself than what you’ve seen before. I’ve always been like this; you just have to get close to find out.”

“So we’re close, then?”

Mikasa smiled, a little bit teasing. “Yeah. I’d say your first squish worked out pretty well for you.”

Sasha’s cheeks darkened, and she covered her face with her hands, letting out a little whine. “I didn’t know you knew!”

“You didn’t exactly hide it, what with you constantly telling me how much you wanted to be my friend. That’s kind of the definition of a squish.”

Another embarrassed whine left Sasha’s lips.

“Hey, it’s fine; if I didn’t like you too, you wouldn’t be here.”

Sasha spread her fingers, peering at Mikasa between them. “Do you really mean that?”

“Yes, of course I do, you big potato dork.”

She groaned and snapped her fingers back together, curling in on herself. “I sneak potato pancakes into class _one time_...”

“Come here, potato dork.” Mikasa took Sasha’s shoulder and pulled her close, laying down on the bed with Sasha half on top of her. “Ow. You’re, um, kind of crushing me.”

“No, I’m not. I’m squishing you.”

\---

Hanji broke into Levi’s apartment yet again, this time on Wednesday night, after Petra left, when he would usually be cleaning. “Levi. You’re sulking.”

“I am not sulking.” He was laying on his couch in the same clothes he’d worn while painting, blessedly free of paint flecks but still not his standard of clean. An arm was thrown over his eyes, as if to block out the light, though all the inside lights were off, save for the one near the door that Hanji had turned on when they came in, and the blinds were drawn closed against the evening streetlamps. The stereo played just on the side of too loud; _I can’t believe you’re feeling good from post-breakup sex_. He hadn’t even fucked anyone. “Okay, maybe I’m sulking a little.”

“I’ll make you some tea.” Hanji closed the door and started to move around in the kitchen, putting the water on and getting out the tea, filter bags, and Levi’s favourite mug. They noted that the glass of water was still on the counter, nearly a week after it had first appeared there. 

Levi mostly ignored the offer of tea; Hanji never quite made it right, but he wasn’t going to turn it down, and they would make it anyway even if he did. “I’ve got another show. It’s in New York. Opens May 2.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

He made a noncommittal noise. “It’s the first day of reading period, so I don’t have to request time off here for the grand unveiling. They want eight paintings.”

“No problem. You’ve got, what, twice that in here?”

Levi sat up, groaning, and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Four old works, and four from the past year. I don’t _have_ four from the past year. I don’t have anything; it’s all been sold or put into my last show. I just have Petra, and that’s not even done. I can’t do three paintings in two and a half months.”

“You can if you work fast.”

Levi glared at them, but Hanji’s back was turned, tending to the whistling water pot on the stove. 

“I know, I know. You don’t work fast. It’s not your thing.” Hanji turned back around, smiling, a steaming cup of tea in their hands. “Think of it as a challenge, or a learning experience. Maybe they’ll look back on you and think, _these were the Rush Days, when he pushed himself to his very limits and still produced these astounding works of art_. Hm?” They set the mug down on the coffee table in front of Levi, shaking their hands after to make the pain of light burns dissipate. “Fuck, that’s hot. Now I know why you hold cups the way you do.”

Levi moved quickly, relocating the mug to a coaster before it could burn the table. He curled his hands around the mug, for once not minding the heat; he purposefully didn’t think about _why_. “There won’t _be_ any astounding works of art if I have to work that fast.”

“Can’t you get a later date?”

“Oh yeah, I’ll just ask Stohess Museum of Modern Art to give me a later date. You’re clueless.” Stohess was known for filling up fast and offering little to no leeway, and that didn’t only extend to the museum; the Stohess family had also funded the construction of one of the dorm buildings in Sina Quad, and since its opening it was the most sought-after living space on Wall’s campus. Stohess Museum was, similarly, one of the most sought-after gallery spaces for current artists, and it was in some ways a rite of passage into the world of successful modern art. 

“You could’ve mentioned Stohess earlier.” Hanji practically fell into an armchair, leaning back and sighing loud enough for the both of them. “You’re fucked.”

“Just a little.” Levi picked up his mug with his fingertips around the rim and took a sip; for once, Hanji had done a decent job, and he got a half-second of delicious black tea before it scalded his tongue and throat. “What in the name of the giant blue dick am I going to do?”

“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do.” Hanji sat up straight, then leaned forward across the coffee table. “You’re going to finish Petra, and you’re going to do that by the end of next week, because I know you can. Then, you’re going to find three models, and you’re going to photograph them. Don’t look at me like that; you don’t have time to work from life, and plenty of hyperrealists work from photos anyway. Once you’ve photographed them, you’re going to work on the paintings, and you’re going to do it fast. I can be your cheerleader if you want. And when they’re done, we’re going to send them off so that you don’t get caught up in thinking they need more work.”

“What if they don’t dry in time? I can’t just work up to the last second, Hanji. Anything I send over needs to be done _now_.”

Hanji got that glint in their eyes, the one that spelled trouble or, more accurately, danger, and Levi immediately started to shake his head. He didn’t want to know what they had planned, but was helpless to stop them; he had to know. Even Hanji’s most out-there plans had always, somehow, worked out all the better for everyone involved in the end, even if it had taken a trip through hell to get there. 

“I guess you’ll have to use a paint that dries faster,” they said. Levi dreaded the next words; “Have you thought about acrylic?”

“I _hate_ acrylic paint.” Levi _hated_ acrylic paint. It was sticky and dried too damn fast -- unnecessarily fast -- and it never had the right consistency and it didn’t blend properly. It shined like plastic when it dried, and it made everything around it smell awful, like a middle school art classroom. He didn’t understand how so many artists could stand to work with it. 

Could he really afford to give anything but his best work to Stohess? If he was just going to give them some rushed crap, completely unlike his usual style, then what was the point? He might as well call them up and say no thanks, and ruin any chance he could ever have of displaying anything there. 

Hanji sighed again and leaned back in the chair, looking defeated. “Maybe I overestimated you.”

Damn them. _Damn_ them. Levi knew it was an act, but Hanji knew exactly how to get under his skin, and doubting him was the best way to piss him off, and pissing him off was the best way to get him to do something he didn’t want to do. 

“I’ll do it.”

 _Fuck_. 

“But where am I going to find three models by the end of next week?”

“You’ve got one right here.” Hanji waved their hands toward their own face. “I told you I wanted you to paint me, didn’t I? And try the college; there are always students looking to make a little extra money. Maybe your ex-not-boy-toy will do it.”

“I’m not going to paint Eren.”

“Are you sure about that? His glass is still on the counter.”

“I’m _not_.” Not after the last time he’d seen him. He wouldn’t have ever hurt Eren, but the fear in the student’s eyes told him that the threat was more than enough. And the way Levi ran out of there because of a little ink on his pants, like the freak he always knew he was, ensured he’d never be able to look Eren in the eye again. “I can’t even talk to him without fucking up both our lives. We’re both better off if I just stay away from him.”

“Who _are_ you?” Hanji got out of the chair and stepped over the narrow table. They dropped one knee down onto the sofa and planted their hands on either side of Levi’s head. “Get ahold of yourself! You sound like a lovesick teenager, and not even a realistic one. You are bad romance novel levels of pathetic.”

“Thanks, Hanji.”

“Don’t fucking _thank_ me. Stand up for yourself! Stop feeling sorry for yourself and _fix things_!” They were shrieking at this point, and Levi wondered if the downstairs neighbours were home and hearing this. “You’re not even listening to me. Who the hell stole your soul?”

Levi met their eyes and stared blankly at them, trying to dredge up their curious mind-link and convey words to them with his eyes alone. _You know exactly who_. 

“Then do something about it. Get your soul back. And then take a picture of his ass and paint it, you fucking drama queen.”

“It’s still not enough time.” 

Hanji groaned and stood up, throwing their hands in the air. 

“I can’t just work on my paintings constantly, Hanji. I have another job. It’s not like I can just leave, I have classes to--” Levi trailed off, a light suddenly coming into his eyes. 

“What?” Hanji asked. 

“I’m-- I can’t fucking _believe_ \--”

Hanji leaned back over Levi, jumping back when he sat up. He didn’t seem to even see them, his eyes having gone unfocused. “What is it?”

“Remember how I didn’t have to be at the first Anatomy studio?” He waited for a response, but didn’t get one. “I didn’t have to be there, and I wasn’t there, because I was setting up that gallery in Boston. I’m not an instructor for that class, I’m just a guest with an opinion, so I don’t have to be there every week. They told me I can just come when it’s… when it’s convenient for me.”

“You’re kidding.”

Levi shook his head. “I mean, I get paid for every week I’m there, but I don’t have to be. I can just… say it’s not convenient any more. And it isn’t. I need that time to work on this show.”

“You didn’t think to mention this earlier?” Hanji was grinning, wide-eyed, and practically drooling. 

“It wasn’t relevant before.”

“It wasn’t-- _Levi_ , you can _fuck the student_!”

Levi opened his mouth, trying to find the words to respond. He settled on a fierce “No!” and shook his head. “I’m doing this to _paint_ , not get in bed with someone a decade younger than me.”

“Decade, shmecade; you’re not going to be his professor any more. If you want to fuck him--”

“Girl. Friend. He has a girlfriend. How many times do I have to tell you that before it gets through your head?”

“Ask him about the poly thing. Do that, and if he says no, I might consider feeling sorry for you and letting it go.” Hanji grabbed Levi’s hands and hauled him up off the couch. “Any more objections?”

“I fought with him yesterday. I think he’s terrified of me.”

“Then apologise, and let him see your soft and squishy side that shows you would never hurt someone you care about.” Hanji said it like it was nothing, no big deal at all, and Levi could almost believe them. But he was a stubborn ass, and he couldn’t let this fight go so easily, even if he didn’t even want to be on the side of it he fought for. 

“I’m a decently well-off, internationally famous painter and he’s a college student who probably already has egregious loan debt and could be using me for my money.” Levi didn’t even believe that one, and he’d only even thrown it out there as a joke. Hanji knew it, and just gave him The Look, the one that said they knew he was grasping at straws and really needed to just shut up and take responsibility for his own emotions and desires. “Yeah, I know. It’s bullshit.” 

Being one of the few people to have ever seen Levi smile, Hanji didn’t comment on the tiny one Levi let free, nor did they mention the tension easing out of him, or the set of his shoulders as if a weight had been lifted off of them. But, being Hanji, they couldn’t completely let it go, so instead they lumped it all into one observation; “Love looks good on you.”

Levi’s smile slipped, and his indifferent mask came crashing down again. “I’m not in love.”

“No, but you will be. I can tell.”

\---

Being in college and living on campus could sometimes put one in a sort of… bubble. The outside world only showed itself minimally, and as such some things could just fly over one’s head until the last moment. 

Like holidays. 

Having visited no stores which needed a commercial boost from holiday-themed sales, Eren didn’t realise Valentine’s Day was coming up until the day before, when he tried to check his mail in the campus centre basement after lunch and saw three clubs selling candy-grams and two a cappella groups selling serenades. 

He considered it for a moment -- a Valentine’s serenade by Crapappella would be _hilarious_ \-- but he didn’t really have the funds for it, and anyway, who would he get it for? Armin was the most logical choice, but he still wasn’t sure where they stood. So he returned to his dorm, with the intention of finally figuring it out. 

Eren sat down on Armin’s bed. He tilted her head up, one finger under her chin, until she made eye contact. “Are we going to talk about this?” he asked. 

“About what?”

He ran his thumb over her bottom lip, then pressed his own lips to hers. It could barely be called a kiss, it was so quick, but when he moved away she tried to chase him, her eyes fluttering closed. 

She nearly fell over, but caught herself with a hand on his knee. Armin’s eyes shifted around, looking everywhere but at Eren. “I-- what do you want me to say?”

“Anything. Just stop running me around in circles to avoid it. We need to have this conversation eventually.”

“I know we do.” Armin toon a deep breath and leaned back against her pillows. “I just. What can I say that you don’t already know? I’m in love with you, I have been for years, and I only just realised it. I’m incredibly jealous of Levi because he got to stick his tongue down your throat first, but I also feel so much better than him because I got to spend my whole life with you. I don’t want you to be with him because it means you can’t be with me, but I also want you to be happy, and I’m a hot mess so what can I really do for you? And I’m desperate, honestly. I’ll take any excuse to get you to touch me, even if it’s the childish things we’ve always done like sleeping nightmares away together.”

“I didn’t know any of that.” When Armin gave Eren a look like she didn’t believe him, he explained. “I thought you… maybe had a crush. I didn’t know you were in love. I knew you were jealous of Levi, true. But the rest of it? Not at all. And I never would have called you desperate or a mess.” He grinned. “Hot, maybe.”

She pushed him away and turned to the side. “Don’t do this. Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. Armin…” Eren reached for her hand, holding it tight. “I don’t know if I’m in love with you. I’m not that great with my feelings. But I do love you, and I think you’re beautiful, and you make me happy just by being in my life. So, all of those things you said… You don’t have to worry about that. I want to be with you too.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“What about Levi?” Armin asked, still refusing to look at Eren. “You said you wouldn’t cheat on me.”

“Levi? I. I kissed Levi, yeah, but we’re not… together, or anything. It was a one-time thing. He’s not okay with dating a student, and yeah, I guess it’s not what I’d have liked to hear, because I really like him. But I also like you.”

“You like him more than me.” Armin was a little desperate, but not so much that she would settle with knowing she was second-best. It might even hurt more than Eren not wanting her at all; at least in that case she could eventually move on. 

Eren shook his head. “I don’t. I like you both the same. When I’m around Levi, I get this feeling like there’s potential for something amazing there, we just have to start it. When I’m with you, well, we have history. I know we’re good together already, and I know we always will be. So it’s different, but it’s not a contest. I just knew I wanted him first, I guess, and I was still confused about what I felt for you when I kissed him. Hell, halfway through, he told me not to wait for him, to go for it if I found someone else, and the first person I thought of was you.”

“So if I date you, there’s no guarantee you won’t be thinking about him?”

Eren sighed and shifted around. Could he promise something like that? No. He couldn’t. That was the hardest thing about this; he didn’t want to be unfaithful to Armin, and he knew that his thoughts would stray to Levi. Even if he didn’t act on those thoughts, he knew there would always be that _what if?_ in the back of his mind. “I can’t promise I won’t think about him.” Armin started to stand, but Eren held her hand tightly. “But I won’t ever regret choosing you.”

Armin turned her head to look back at Eren. “Even though you like us both the same?” She didn’t believe him, and anyway, she couldn’t stand to have Eren to herself but still half-pining over someone he could never have. Even Eren dating them both would be fine, if that was what he wanted; then she’d know he was honestly devoting himself to both her and Levi. But this just wasn’t right. “No, Eren. It hurts to say it, but no.” 

Her hand slipped out of Eren’s, and she left the room, barely pausing to grab her keys, phone, and coat.

Eren put his head in his hands. The rejection had been unexpected, so much so that Eren hadn’t even considered it was a possibility. Now, he’d as good as lost Armin completely. 

They were good together. They had history. They were close, as close as best friends could get, and they loved each other. Yet, Eren couldn’t keep a rein on his emotions, on his attraction, and he realised with a sinking feeling and a vise-grip on his heart that sometimes loving someone wasn’t enough to hold on to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> songs were “[Science Fiction/Double Feature](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5MHNvOVl8Y)” from the Rocky Horror Picture Show and “[Post Break-up Sex](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU9hrd35Dsg)” by the Vaccines.


	13. Te Amo (Short Skirt Long Jacket)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a difference between smileys and descriptive Japanese emoticons. Armin takes matters into her own very capable and somewhat shaky hands. We can’t all be Eren; most of us are more of a Connie. Armin shows some skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: misgendering (some accidental, some with purpose)

Armin didn’t come back that night. 

At a few minutes past midnight, hair still wet from her shower after the first Rocky Horror rehearsal, Mikasa came into Eren’s room in her pyjamas. She looked at Eren for a moment, sighed, and shook her head sadly. “She’s in my room. Leave her be.”

Eren nodded and turned over in his bed. He raised the volume on his music, an earbud lodged uncomfortably between his ear and the pillow while he laid on his side. The Eagles played, familiar and soothing despite his churning thoughts. Or, maybe because of his thoughts; he could empathise all too well with the sentiment _there’s a hole in the world tonight_. 

He turned down the music a little, low enough that he could hear past it. “How are things with Sasha?” he whispered, hoping Mikasa was still awake. 

Sheets rustled, indicating she’d heard him, but Mikasa didn’t answer right away. She flipped over onto her back, though Eren didn’t see, and she looked over at her brother. “...Good,” she answered after a little wait. “We’re good. She pretty much lives in my room now. Aside from tonight, that is.”

“You seem happy.”

“I am. She’s a good friend.”

“I’m happy for you,” he said, but he sounded sad. 

Mikasa took just a moment to send him a pitying look across the room, and then she threw off her blankets and crossed over to his bed. She sat on the edge and yanked out one of his earbuds. “What is it you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. Armin and Levi; what is it you want from them?”

“I want…” Eren hesitated. How could he even put what he wanted into words? It wasn’t what he wanted from them individually that was the problem; it was that he wanted them both. “I want a universe where it’s okay to want both of them.”

“You’re in one.”

“What?”

This was why Mikasa called Eren her little brother; he was older by almost a year, but there was so much he didn’t know. Maybe it was because his brain took most of a year off to more or less repair itself after the accident, but that didn’t explain how he could just _miss things_ like this. “You’re in that universe. You love them both--” Eren made a sound of protest, so Mikasa edited her words. “You have romantic feelings for both of them, and that’s fine. But what do you want to do about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then figure it out, because you’re hurting Armin, and you’re hurting yourself, and hell, Levi’s probably hurt, too.” She dropped the free earbud on his face and returned to Armin’s bed, pulling the blankets up over her head with an undebatable finality. 

Eren shoved the earbud back in, trying to fall asleep to the sound of a band he loved, but the songs hit too close to home; _I know that you’ve got your reasons, but these things that are pleasing you can hurt you somehow._

There was a solution. It was an obvious one, at least to Mikasa, and Eren must have no idea it was even a possibility if it bothered him that much to have feelings for two people. She wouldn’t usually suggest it, too wary of the ways she’d seen people get hurt before, but if anyone could pull off dating two people, loving two people, committing oneself wholeheartedly to two people, that person was Eren. He was passionate enough, if nothing else, and more than determined enough to fight for what he cared about. The things he was feeling were proof enough that he had more than enough love to spare. 

He had to come to that conclusion on his own, or Armin or Levi had to suggest it. Mikasa wouldn’t be the one to push them into anything, not unless Eren came to her specifically for advice. Maybe Eren wasn’t ready for something like this; maybe Armin and Levi weren’t willing to share. That was understandable. 

At the same time, she hoped it would be something they wanted. At the very least, she wanted to see Eren and Armin happy. 

Mikasa’s phone buzzed and the screen lit up, declaring a text from Sasha. Its harsh light filled the cozy space below Armin’s blankets. 

_Connie snuck into Dauper and is harassing me about the Easy Mac. (T_T)_

_give him some then_ , Mikasa responded. 

The next text came seconds later: _How could you?! ====(/TTATT)/_

_you gave plenty to me._

_You’re different. v(^_^)v_

Mikasa could never understand why people thought she was missing out just because she didn’t have any interest in sex or romantic love. She was happy, and even happier seeing a message like this, telling her someone found her special as a friend. Eren could stew over his heart pulled two ways, and he’d be happy eventually, in his own way. Mikasa would be happy in hers. 

_thank you_ , she sent back to Sasha. Maybe she should have been specific, but then again, there wasn’t really any specific things she was thanking Sasha for. It was for everything. 

_Te amo! (` 3`)p <3_ Sasha replied, and a few moments later she added, _You know, platonically. ~~~(.////////.)_

Mikasa smiled, and she wracked her brain for the bits of Japanese her mother had taught her while she was alive. _suki yo. good night sasha._ In minutes, she was asleep. 

She woke up to Eren’s alarm; Eren was already sitting up in bed, and he gave her a wry smile and said, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Mikasa tried her best to hold back her laughter, but one snort made it through, and Eren slumped forward, defeated. “I’m sorry. It’s just that, well, it’s a day for all of you love-people to be happy, and you feel like shit, whereas I, the asexual, very happily have a friendly valentine.”

Eren tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. “I feel like I’d usually find that funny. Maybe someday I will. Not today, though.” He fell back into bed. “Tell Professor Shadis I’m sick.”

“I don’t think so. You’re not missing class just because you want to avoid people.” When Eren just pulled his blankets up over his head, Mikasa got up and crossed the room, bent down, and picked him up in her arms, blankets and all. He made a noise best described as a squeak, and thrashed around, trapped in his blanket burrito four feet in the air, until Mikasa dropped him back on his bed. “Are you awake now?”

Eren threw off his blankets. “Fuck you! Weirdo sister. How are you even that strong?”

“Don’t change the subject. Get out of bed. You’re going to class even if I have to carry you there in your underwear.”

Eren complied, but stubbornly; he threw on the nearest pair of jeans (from the floor) and a sweatshirt over his pyjamas, not bothering to do anything like shower or change his underwear. He left his hair in its bedhead state, sticking straight up on one side, and when Mikasa came back dressed from her room and pointed it out, he simply licked his hand and smoothed that side down with his spit. 

“That’s disgusting,” Mikasa told him, but as soon as he had shoes on she started pulling him out the door. “You’re going on ahead without me. I’m going to tell you this now and you won’t know what it means until it happens, but _don’t fuck this up_. Find me if you think you’re going to do something unwise. Go,” she shooed him, and he complied, heading for the stairs on his own. 

_Don’t fuck what up?_ he thought, mind on repeat as he walked to class. Was there anything left that he hadn’t fucked up already? Mikasa was sending him into his demise alone; he’d walk in to class and see Levi, and he had no clue what to do. He should apologise, for one, but who said Levi would even listen? And then there was Armin. Eren had no clue what to do in her case, despite how long they had been friends. This was new territory and Eren couldn’t even make a guess as to how he should go about repairing their friendship. 

As for a relationship with either of them… maybe he should just let that idea go. He couldn’t choose between them, so he might as well choose neither. He should move on, find a way to remain friends with them both. It would save everyone involved a lot of unnecessary pain. At least he wouldn’t lose their presence in his life. 

Levi wasn’t in the room when Eren arrived, and it worried him, because the last time Levi hadn’t been in the room at least fifteen minutes early, he’d been their model for the second time -- and he’d been a nervous wreck. Eren wasn’t really sure he could deal with either. He still didn’t show up when there was only a minute left to the start of class, and Mikasa and Armin were nowhere to be found as well. 

Eren tacked up his homework on some free wall space and took a seat on a rickety chair, and checked his phone’s schedule for his assignments, but some distant whispers and scuffling took his attention. He looked up in time to see Mikasa come in, arm-in-arm with Armin. They had switched coats; Mikasa wore Armin’s long blue peacoat, hanging open as it was just a bit too small, and Armin wore Mikasa’s floor-length black coat, bundled up completely. The distinctive clacking of high heels sounded out in time with Armin’s steps, and Eren finally caught up to the meaning of “don’t fuck this up”. 

Someone else must have noticed them come in, or noticed Eren staring, because he heard a sharp intake of breath when Armin shucked her coat. She stepped out in a dress Eren could swear he’d once seen on Mikasa, black denim and red accents, with stockings that might have been thigh-highs but disappeared below the hem, and the heels that Eren had heard tapping away through her entrance. 

Armin’s cheeks were pink, partly from the cold and partly from nervousness, and she clasped her hands together behind her back to stop them from shaking. She looked straight ahead, though, her stare challenging anyone who looked for too long. 

Connie didn’t meet her eyes, too fixated on her outfit, and as such didn’t get stared down before he asked, “So are you a drag queen now?”

“No,” Armin replied. Though her hands shook, her voice was steady. “I’m a woman.”

After a moment of silence and a confused expression, Connie smiled and nodded. He snapped his fingers once and pointed at Armin. “Like that lady in the prison show on Netflix, right?”

Armin closed her eyes, a little relieved smile gracing her lips. “Yeah. Like her. With, um, less criminal activity.”

“I got you.” Connie held his hand out for a fist-bump, and Armin indulged him. 

Professor Shadis broke the silence that took over. “Thank you for that heartwarming display, Arlert. I respect your identity, but as you and Ackerman were late to class, you’ll be the subjects of homework critique today.”

“Yes, professor,” Mikasa and Armin said in unison. They tacked up their homework next to each other, and as they found seats, Eren caught Armin’s eye and gave her a thumbs-up. Armin smiled back whole-heartedly, and she bumped her knuckles against his shoulder as she passed him, and he had hope that he could repair the damage he’d done. More importantly, her first public coming out had gone well, and that was definitely something to be happy about. 

“Nice ass, Jager,” someone shouted, referring to Armin’s drawing. Eren had to do another still-life for Drawing 2, and he’d done so standing over an arrangement on a table; Armin had drawn him at a 3/4 angle from behind. 

Eren turned around and smiled at her; Armin smiled back, laughing behind her hand, and she raised her eyebrows once, a quick up-down that was one part what-are-you-looking-at and two parts suggestive. 

So it seemed the flirting didn’t end just because their vague, cuddle-filled, and sometimes sexually-charged arrangement had. 

Shadis pulled out his notebook and a pen, and rested them on his lap before speaking. “Before we start critiques, I have an announcement. Levi will not be at every studio session as he has been so far; something came up --” someone snorted in a poorly-contained laugh “-- and he needs the time he has been spending with us to put into his painting. He still has office hours at the same times as usual if you need to speak with him.” After that, Shadis launched into homework critique, starting with Armin’s drawing. 

Armin’s coming-out party lasted through the rest of the day and, in fact, the rest of the weekend. She e-mailed the rest of her professors about the pronoun update after lunch, and when Annie showed up to dinner on Saturday night with Reiner and Bertholdt in tow, she told them as well. Marco didn’t join their table again until Sunday afternoon, and Armin told him straight away. Connie then launched into the story of Armin’s entrance into Anatomy. 

“So we’re about to start class, right? And these two walk in, wearing each others’ coats, and Eren looks up and goes all…” Connie tensed up and widened his eyes, then returned to his previous expression. “Like he’s seen a ghost or something. And then, Armin takes off his coat-- Shit, sorry man, I mean, sorry, uh, girl…” He stammered a few more times, then took a deep breath when Armin nodded at him to go on. “She took off _her_ coat, and she was wearing this little black dress and heels, and let me tell you, Armin, you looked _fantastic_.”

“Thank you.” Armin blushed a little, not used to such compliments. 

“Ten out of ten, would bang if you were into guys and wanted to.”

“...I am. You know. ‘Into guys. Didn’t you know that?”

Connie made a face, like he couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. “I thought you said you weren’t gay.”

“I’m not.”

Connie’s eyelids fluttered a little, and he smiled and shook his head. “Right. Sorry. Still getting used to it.”

“It’s fine. We can’t all be Eren.”

“What do you mean?”

“He got it right on the first try, and ever since.” Armin smiled at Eren, but he looked away. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Eren insisted. “I just did what I was supposed to do.”

It was awkward, Eren thought, to see Armin so carefree just days after they had broken up from not-quite-dating, as if she’d taken that one night of solitude in Mikasa’s room to just get over him. Eren was still pining, still wishing things were different and he could love her in every way she wanted him to, and Armin still shot him those teasing, flirty looks that made his heart race and reminded him of snow days and pyjamas and sharing heat and kisses and friction and laundry detergent. 

But there were two pairs of lips he wanted to feel pressed against his, still two pairs, so he kept it to himself. If Armin was acting like nothing was wrong, then she must really believe it, and Eren wouldn’t take that away from her. 

It wasn’t until Monday night that the world caught up with Armin, and she came back from her night class with her eyes puffy from holding back tears. Eren immediately shot out of bed and enveloped her in his arms; she dropped her bag on the floor and hugged him back, her head tucked into his shoulder. She didn’t cry, but it was a close thing. 

“I should have known something was wrong. My other professors e-mailed me back, but he didn’t…” Armin took a heavy breath, and Eren rubbed her back slowly.

“Hey, shh, you’re here now. Tell me what happened.”

Armin took another deep breath, and she stayed with her face pressed into Eren’s shoulder, so he strained to hear her when she recounted the last few hours in a mumble. “As soon as I got to class, Professor Verman just _glared_ at me, like I was an insect he wanted to step on. I almost left right then and there, but it was my favourite class, you know? So I went in, and I sat down, and I got out my textbook and my notes, and he just kept glaring at me, right up until class started. He didn’t join the table like he usually does, he just started reading off his laptop, and he was reading _my e-mail_ , and the way he said it -- he made it sound like some sort of murder manifesto! And then when he was done, he said, ‘I will not accept this, Arlert. You are a man, and foolish cries for attention will not be tolerated in my classroom.’ And he started class, just like that, as if I wasn’t _dying_ in my seat, and as if the entire class wasn’t too stunned to even reply. 

“I saw them, Eren; they were ready to kill him. One person just packed up and left, and he said if someone was going to walk out in support of me, then good riddance. I just. I couldn’t move. Not until he ended class, and then I ran out of there. 

“I don’t know what to do now. I want to drop the class just to get away from him, but I need the credits, and the class drop period is already over.”

“First-years get a free drop,” Eren said. “And you can make the credits up later.”

“I don’t want to give up, though, and I love the material.”

“Armin.”

“I know.” She sighed and pulled away; her hair fell in front of her face, and Eren wanted to reach out and brush it away, but he held back. “It’s not like I’ll learn anything if I have to constantly worry about this. It frees up a lot of time, though; what am I going to do with that?”

“Dance more?”

Armin looked up, finally meeting Eren’s eyes, and smiled. “Maybe.” She picked at a loose thread in the neckline of his shirt. “...Can we pretend I never broke up with you?”

“Armin.”

“Just this once. Please.”

Eren turned away. He couldn’t tell her no while looking into her pleading eyes. “It won’t make you feel better.”

“How do you know that?”

“You said it yourself; you can’t be with me while I’m still thinking about Levi.” 

Armin pushed him away, and he called after her but she didn’t listen. “I’m going to take a bath,” she said, and she started taking off her clothes, tossing each piece one-by-one on the nearest bed-- Eren’s. 

Eren looked away, refusing to give in. If he touched her now, what was to say it wouldn’t become a habit? And then they’d be in an even bigger mess than before, blurring the boundaries between friends and lovers, instead of letting those categories co-exist like they almost did before. 

“Can you hand me my towel?” Armin asked. Eren looked around for it on Armin’s side of the room, pointedly avoiding where she stood in front of Eren’s bed. He found it, and tossed it in her general direction; it hit her mostly in the face, as evidenced by a muffled “oof!” and an exasperated sigh. 

“Eren. Look at me.”

He didn’t. 

She sighed again, and started to move; the sound of her steps came closer to Eren, and he chanced a look at her. Armin stood completely bare in front of him, her towel hanging over one arm. She kept moving closer, and he backed away; the backs of his knees hit her bed, and he fell, instantly trapped by Armin as she stepped right in front of him. He resolutely kept his gaze on her eyes. 

“You really don’t want me?” she asked. 

“I do. But I can’t do this. Not now.”

Armin shook her head. She wrapped the towel around herself, tucking it closed over her chest like a dress, and left without another word. 

Eren expected to hear the cold finality of a slammed door, but Armin took care to close it gently, only the slow creak of the hinges and the click of the latch making any noise. 

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there on Armin’s bed, hoping he made the right decision, before there was a soft knock on the door. 

“Eren, open up, please.” 

Eren stood and nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to reach the door. He threw it open, and Armin stood on the other side, shivering and clutching her towel closed. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. 

Eren blinked, then reached out to her. “I’m sorry, too.” He rested his hand on the back of her head, on her damp hair, and pulled her in for a hug. 

“I don’t want to lost my best friend over jealousy or some pointless fight.”

“I know. I don’t want to lose you either. Come inside, the hall is freezing.” He let her in and shut the door, then pulled the bunched-up blanket off the foot of his bed to toss it over her shoulders. They sat down on Eren’s bed in a spot not strewn with Armin’s discarded clothes, Armin sort of in his lap and sort of between his legs, and he combed her hair for her, not caring that it dripped frigid water onto his blanket. 

“Are we okay?”

Eren paused in his combing and leaned his head against the back of Armin’s. He mumbled into her hair, “We are if you want us to be. As friends.”

“That’s more than enough. I love you, Eren.”

“I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> songs mentioned in or related to this chapter: “[Short Skirt / Long Jacket](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7aDstrDMf0)” by CAKE, “[Hole in the World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haNpuHZam40) and “[Desperado](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDNtqy0zjJA)” by the Eagles.


	14. Never Let Your Fear Decide Your Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren gets blown, but not in the way you’d think. Armin is made of ice cream. Levi makes an appointment. There are terms and conditions when living with a roommate.

Immediately after lunch on Tuesday, Eren made his way down to the art building. He turned off his music as soon as he was inside, stuffing his headphones in his sweatshirt pocket along with his phone. The doors to the Advanced Painting studio were closed, and Levi’s low voice could be heard on the other side as he began homework critique for his Hyperrealism class. 

Eren couldn’t very well interrupt the man’s class, and he had homework to do anyway, so he took up a spot in the Illustration studio. Someone else, a senior Eren didn’t know well, was in the far corner and had what looked like comic pages spread out on the floor, over top of some newspaper. He didn’t disturb her; instead, he set up a drawing horse and board near the door and got to work. 

Music helped Eren focus, so he stuck his earbuds back in, but he played it low, only loud enough that he didn’t hear the shuffling of paper and scratching of a pen from the student across the room. Levi’s voice came through every once in a while when he got a little louder than usual, but Eren didn’t mind it that much. 

Having cleared the air with Armin the night before, Eren wanted to do the same with Levi. Even if they didn’t have the history to tie them together as friends -- and Eren wasn’t sure how to be _friends_ with someone that much older than him -- he didn’t want to leave Levi with a fight as their last memory of each other. 

Billy Joel faded out, Elton John faded in, and a little under three hours after Eren had arrived, a great shuffling began in the studio across the hall. Minutes later, students came pouring out, and Levi was the last to leave. He shut off the lights and both sets of double doors, and exited through the one nearest to Eren. Eren looked up just in time to smile at him; Levi stopped in his tracks, looking as much like a deer in headlights as he could without actually changing his expression. 

Eren raised his hand to wave, and Levi nodded at him, then turned and left, heading for his office. 

Maybe Levi would come back and visit Eren after his office hours. If not, he’d probably hang around in his office for a little while after, and Eren could go talk to him there. He was almost done with his homework, anyway; there were benefits to getting here earlier than usual. But Levi would come. Levi would definitely come. Right? 

But then the hour passed, and Levi didn’t come around, and another half hour passed, and Levi still didn’t come back, so Eren, long since finished with his homework and fiddling with his phone’s schedule, decided to pack up and head down to Levi’s office himself. 

He’d never been here before; he’d never had reason to. His pre-major advisor, professor Hannes, had the office next door, so Eren knew where Levi’s was, but he’d never actually visited the man’s office hours before. Levi’s door was shut, but there was light coming through the frosted glass window, so Eren knocked. There was no answer, so he knocked again -- still nothing. 

“Levi?” Eren called out, trying to be quiet so as to not disturb anyone around. 

“He left a while ago,” a professor across the hall informed him. “Try coming during his office hours.”

“I thought he’d still be here,” Eren mumbled. The light coming in must have been from the sun; this side of the building faced west, after all. 

Eren shuffled down the hall, his head down. Why would Levi leave? Didn’t he want to make up? 

Maybe he didn’t know Eren wanted to talk. Eren hadn’t exactly made his intentions clear, just smiled at him after class as if Levi would know what that meant. 

Or maybe he really didn’t want to see Eren again. 

Maybe he wanted to reduce their interactions to an awkward wave-and-nod when they saw each other. Maybe he was really trying to cut Eren out of his life -- perhaps so he could get over his attraction. That would make sense. 

Shadis had said Levi left the Anatomy class to work on his paintings, and Eren believed it, but what if Levi had been looking for a reason to get out of seeing Eren and was just lucky enough to stumble upon one? And anyway, what could have come up that the six hours a week Levi put into two Anatomy for the Artist classes made such a huge difference?

So many questions. What did Eren really know about Levi, anyway?

He took the stairs down and exited the building; it was unusually warm for February, so Eren took a seat on the steps. He leaned back, resting his elbows on the step behind him, and looked up at the sky. 

What _did_ he know about Levi?

_I know he has wing tattoos on his back, and scars on his body but I don’t know why._

_I know he used to be a prostitute._

_I know he wears all-white clothing just about every day. I know he freaks out when he gets anything on it. I know he’s always clean, and his apartment is just as clean is he is._

_I know he puts his hands in his pockets when he’s nervous._

_I know he wears eyeliner, but he washes it off when he’s modelling._

_I know he usually keeps his face in a blank expression, but I also know some of the ways his eyes betray what he’s feeling._

_I know he can be irritable, and kind of a dick, but he can also be sweet and he looks out for other people._

_I know what it’s like to kiss him, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget._

_I know what he looks like when he smiles._

Was all that enough to say he really knew Levi? Maybe not, but it was enough that he knew he wanted to get to know Levi better, if the man would let him in. 

The sunshine streaming on Eren’s face suddenly cut off, and Annie’s face appeared above him. She parted her lips just slightly, and blew smoke directly into his face. 

“Fuck!” He sat up, waving his hands through the air to clear it. “I get enough of that at home, thanks.”

Annie rolled her eyes, and took another drag from her cigarette. Smoke puffed out from between her lips and wisped around her as she spoke. “You looked lost in thought.”

“I am. Or, I was.” Eren sighed. “Have you ever been attracted to someone older than you?”

“Define older.”

“Ten years.”

Annie smirked. “So it’s true. You are in love with that short painter.”

“I’m not in love with him,” Eren argued. “And he’s not that short.”

She made a disbelieving face, and exhaled through her nose; the smoke that curled around her nostrils made her look like she was about to breathe fire, as terrifying as Eren knew her to be. He noticed then that she was wearing sweatpants, and her gym bag was slung over one shoulder, and that, laying on the steps as he was, he was at a physical disadvantage should she want to attack him. 

He really hoped she didn’t attack him. 

She jerked her head to the side, flicking her hair out of her face; it settled right back where it had started. “To answer your question, no. Can’t help you, sorry.”

“How about two people at once?”

Annie smiled at that, a scary, sneaky sort of smile that told him clearly she knew exactly how to help him, but wouldn’t. “Armin, right?”

“Yeah.”

She leaned against the railing and pushed at his shoulder with her foot, knocking him over on his side. “Good luck.” Looking out at the street, Annie crushed the butt of her cigarette under her heel. “I’ll see you around, Eren.” She dashed across the street, making it just before the light changed, and waved at him from the other side. 

Would anyone tell him what he should do? Mikasa and Annie both seemed to have some idea about how to solve his problems, but Annie seemed to enjoy watching him suffer, and Mikasa probably wanted him to figure it out himself for once. But he couldn’t think of a damn thing, not one solution to the tug-of-war his heart had arranged with itself. At least, not one that wouldn’t end in pain and heartbreak. 

It was time to let it go. 

...but that would be quitting. That would be giving up, and Eren Jager never gives up. Eren Jager fights for what he wants, and for what he cares about. He fights for it until there isn’t anything left to fight for. 

He jumped to his feet, filled with a new determination. Whatever it took, for as long as either of them still cared about him, he would find a way to love both Armin and Levi. 

Somehow. 

\---

“What the hell is on your head?”

“Hi, Eren.”

Eren stood in the doorway, still staring, concerned, at his best friend while she studied on her bed. Armin gave no indication that she was going to explain the bubble-like object on her head, nor the strange goopy mess that her hair appeared to be underneath it. 

“You look like a jellyfish,” Eren said. 

Armin rolled her eyes. “It’s a shower cap. I’m bleaching my hair.” She stuck a post-it note to her textbook and wrote something on it, then closed the book and tossed it to the side. She unfolded her legs and stretched them. 

“Why? You’re already blonde.”

“I’m going to dye it. I’m thinking something light, maybe orange or pink.” Armin finally looked at Eren, and his eyes were bugging out of his head. “Oh, come on. Don’t look at me like that. Mikasa and Sasha are doing it, they asked if I wanted to. And I do.”

“Isn’t Mikasa in class?”

“Cancelled. Do you not like the idea?”

If Eren was being honest, he wasn’t super excited about it, but that wasn’t the issue. He didn’t know Armin ever wanted something like this, but then, it seemed like lately there were a lot of things he didn’t know about Armin. 

He didn’t really like not knowing his own best friend. 

He hoped this wasn’t a reaction to Professor Verman’s comments the night before; to Eren’s knowledge, she still hadn’t dropped the class. As much as Eren wanted to see Armin accepted by everyone, and as proud as he would be to see her stand up for herself like that, it didn’t seem like Verman would be receptive to Armin calling attention to herself. 

“I’m just surprised,” Eren answered. He closed the door behind him and fully entered the room. 

“I’ve been surprising you a lot lately, haven’t I?”

Eren sat down on his bed and ran his hand through his hair, ducking his head so as to not meet Armin’s eyes. “It’s fine.” 

“You don’t have to pretend.”

“I’m not pretending. It’s fine that you’re surprising me. I mean, it’s not like I can control you. You’re your own person.”

“Yeah, but I still want to know your opinion. It was kind of a last-minute decision, anyway.”

“All right, well…” Eren thought about it for a moment. He tried to imagine Armin as anything other than blonde; with anything other than straw yellow hair framing her face. He recoloured her hair pink in his mind’s eye and found himself unconsciously smiling. She looked like cotton candy. “I think you’ll look adorable.”

“Adorable like a teddy bear or adorable like you want to fuck me?”

Eren dropped his smile, using his eyes to ask _are you serious?_ Armin brought her hands up and tucked them under her chin, fingers folded together, and she looked at him through her eyelashes; she was trying to look seductive, but with the jellyfish-like shower cap still on her head, she didn’t accomplish it at all. Eren snorted a laugh into his hand. 

“ _Fine_. What colour?”

“What were the options?”

“Pink or orange.”

“Huh…” He tried to imagine them, but it seemed like choice between strawberry ice cream and orange sherbet. “Both.”

“What do you mean, ‘both’?”

Eren stood up and crossed over to Armin’s bed, gesturing around her face while he explained. “So, like, pink from the top to about here --” he pointed at her cheeks “-- and then orange the rest of the way.” He then pressed his palms flat against her cheeks and squished her face, and she batted his hands away. 

“Eren!”

“Sorry. I had to.” He did it again, and leaned down to plant a quick kiss on her lips. 

“Um.”

Eren realised what he’d done and released her face. “That didn’t happen.”

“R-right. So, um, both colours?”

“Yeah.”

\---

It was Tuesday afternoon, Levi had no grading for once, Petra couldn’t get out of her other job on such short notice, and the acrylics he’d ordered wouldn’t arrive until the end of the week. So, despite irritation that he was so soon finding himself unable to put in the necessary time for his paintings, Levi decided to make a trip he’d been avoiding. Luckily enough, the man he needed to see had a free hour. 

Levi often questioned why he, or anyone really, let Erwin prod his head. The man could be downright evil when he wanted to be; he was dangerously opinionated and stubborn to a fault, and he had gone through the horrors of war and came back one limb short, and yet, completely bypassing what could have been very understandable PTSD, he was obsessed enough to still want to go _back_. But…

He gave good advice, and was patient enough to provide therapy even to the likes of Levi and Hanji. He also didn’t judge Levi for his actions, even if Levi himself did; it was what had made them all friends in the first place. That was the most he could ask for, really. 

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Erwin said in lieu of a greeting. He smiled warmly, his hands -- one natural and relaxed, the other stiff and prosthetic -- clasped in his lap. His glasses, which usually rested in his shirt pocket, instead took up residence on his face, and Levi felt like he was being scrutinised under a microscope which, he supposed, he sort of was. 

“Yeah, well. The Anatomy studio overlaps with my usual time.”

“I thought you didn’t have to be there every week.”

Levi cringed, just slightly. Of course Erwin would be the only one who remembered that particular bit of information. “I don’t have to. I want to.”

“Oh?”

That was the thing Levi hated most. That fucking “Oh?” like Erwin had him all figured out not two minutes into their meeting. “Yes,” he said challengingly. “They pay me enough, and it gets me out of bed. But I’m not going anymore; I have a show coming up and I need the time.”

“Are you going to tell be about that boy?”

 _Fuck!_ “How did you find out? Hanji, right?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.” Ah, pure bullshit. 

“It was Hanji.”

Erwin smiled. “You said, ah, how did she put it…” He looked up and a little to the side, as if trying to recall Hanji’s specific words -- as if he didn’t have them memorised already. “ _He’ll bleed, or he’ll be shitting my jizz for a month_?”

Levi ignored him, hoping to avoid this subject. He was here to give Erwin an update on his OCD symptoms changing yet again, not talk about his pitiful love life. “You still call Hanji that?”

“She told me she’d prefer everyone continue to call her whatever we always have. Don’t change the topic. I heard you shared a smoothie with him in the campus centre.”

Well, if that was all he heard about, it couldn’t hurt, right? “We did not share a smoothie. I got my own, thanks very much.”

“But you did go with him.”

“Your point?”

“Was it a date?”

Those piercing blue eyes scrutinised Levi from behind glasses, pinning him down like a frog about to be dissected. He had him, and there was no escape. “I want to say no.”

“So it was.”

“Not… officially.” Levi wanted to smack himself; he sounded like a teenager, debating semantics over whether or not hanging out with a crush who liked him back really counted as a date. Ugh. “But I wanted it to be.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I take it ‘horny’ isn’t the answer you’re looking for?” 

“Levi.”

Right. He couldn’t bullshit Erwin. “Kind of pissed off at myself. I should be mature enough to avoid this kind of shit, right? Falling for college students.”

“How do you know you’re angry?”

Oh, not this shit again. Every time Erwin asked that, it always ended in Levi really being either afraid or ashamed, and too proud to deal with his emotions directly or admit to what they truly were. Well, not this time, asshole. “Because I want to fucking break things whenever I think about him.”

“Destructive tendencies aren’t like you, Levi. Certainly not ones that would cause a mess.”

“Tell me about it.”

“This is rather concerning. And the fact that it’s affecting your compulsions suggests it’s not anger motivating you.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” Levi spat. “And I’m not ashamed either. I’m pissed. I want to be able to control myself.” The rage started to burn under his skin, and he could feel himself start to shake with it, but Erwin continued to smile placidly across from him. 

“What happens if you can’t control yourself?”

“I could take advantage of him.” _I’ve done it already,_ Levi wanted to say, but the truth was that Eren had been the one to request a kiss, and Levi had met him halfway. 

“You don’t strike me as the type to take advantage of someone you care about.”

“Right, that’s more your style.” Levi crossed his arms and sank back into his chair. It was Erwin-sized, and dwarfed him. “Either way, this isn’t right.”

“What’s wrong about it? Presumably he’s an adult and can make decisions for himself, and from what I’ve been told he’s as attracted to you as you are to him.”

“He’s eleven years younger than me. Even if he’s not my student anymore, I feel like one of those old men who dates women younger than his kids.”

“Personally, I don’t think that’s a comparable situation. Then again…” Erwin paused, still one for a little dramatic effect. “You _are_ old.” He smiled, even as Levi glared daggers at him. “I’m not going to tell you what to do about him. You have to decide that for yourself. 

“But from what you’ve told me, it seems to me like you’re ashamed of your attraction, understandably so, and you’re afraid of taking advantage of him, which is a little less understandable. You have a lot of self-control, Levi, more than just about anyone else I know, and am I right in thinking he’s interested in you?”

Levi nodded. Part of him wanted to push back against what Erwin was saying; he certainly didn’t want his actions to be motivated by fear. But at the same time, now that he really paid attention, it was hard to rationalise that he was _angry_ he might not be able to control himself, rather than afraid of the possibility. 

“The college administration may not look so kindly upon a relationship between a professor and student, but I don’t think this is a case of ethical concerns. You have personal reservations, some of them perhaps societally influenced, and they’re preventing you from making an informed decision.”

“He’s still young. I did a lot of things I’m not proud of at his age.”

“Did they seem like good ideas at the time?”

“Some of them did.”

Erwin unclasped his hands and used his left to take off his glasses; he folded them, and put them into their usual place in his pocket. Levi relaxed a little; the scrutiny was over. “If we went around thinking that we shouldn’t do anything we might regret, we’d never get anything done. We’d never take a single risk, and it could never have the chance to turn out well.” He clenched and unclenched his hand once, the joints cracking loudly in the quiet room. “So, don’t regret what you’ve done; it’s a good philosophy you have. But don’t let the possibility of regret stop you. Because that’s giving in to fear.”

“God damn,” Levi said. There was no switch flipped, and he didn’t instantly feel better about his Eren problem, but at least he understood why everyone was pushing him to go for it. He felt a little more clear-headed, just like every time he met with Erwin. “Remind me again why I avoid coming to these things?”

“Because you want to think you can figure out solutions to all your problems on your own. Don’t worry, you’re far from the only person with that sort of pride. But pride goes before the fall. Don’t let it get the better of you.”

\---

The bleach turned Armin’s hair almost white, and luckily didn’t change the texture noticeably, so she headed back across the hall with Eren in tow. Mikasa’s door was open, and she was visible from the hall; Sasha’s hands worked a deep red dye onto a few bleached strands. Sasha’s own hair was partially covered in green dye, from about her shoulders down, and the dyed part was covered in plastic wrap. Previously, that part of her hair had been a fading blue. 

“Eren thinks I should do two colours,” Armin said. 

Sasha scrunched up her face. “I’ll do my best. Which ones would you like?”

“Pink and orange.”

“Oh, um.” Sasha turned slightly and waved a red-stained, latex-glove-covered hand toward the trash bin. “The pink was kind of… fuzzy.”

“You mean, moldy fuzzy? Ew. I guess it’ll have to be all orange, then. That okay with you, Eren?”

Eren shrugged. “Fine by me. It was only a suggestion; I think you’ll look good no matter what.”

“Aww,” Mikasa cooed. “Hey Eren, you want to do something with your hair too?”

“Is there any colour you’re almost out of?”

Sasha leaned over and checked the little bottles on the floor. “There’s some blue left from the last time I did mine. It’s probably enough to cover all your hair, if you want.”

“I’ll finish it up for you if you want.” If there was any time to do creative things with his hair, it was while he was in college. “If I put it on my hair without bleaching it, how will it look?”

“Awful, trust me. You’re done, Mikasa.” Sasha twisted the hair into a bun and stuck a big butterfly clip in it, then covered it up with a clean shower cap. “I’ll do Eren’s bleach first, then Armin’s colour, okay?” She snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves and picked up the cup of leftover hair bleach, stirring it a little. “Shirt off, if you care about it at all. There’s not a lot of bleach left, and your hair’s pretty dark; the dye might come out looking kind of green. Is that okay? I’m out of toner.”

“Doesn’t make that much of a difference to me.” It was a spur-of-the-moment decision anyway, and he did more or less leave the colour up to what she had available. He sat in the chair Mikasa had just vacated and almost immediately felt fingers in his hair and a cool, sticky substance spread around. 

Sasha gave him instructions while she worked the bleach in quickly. “The longer you leave the bleach in, the lighter your hair will get; don’t leave it in more than an hour and a half, though. It won’t get any lighter, and you’ll destroy your hair. Rinse it out as best you can, shampoo it until it doesn’t feel weird anymore, and then once it dries, put the dye in. I’ll be at rehearsal, so you have to do that yourself; just use all of it and spread it evenly. I’ll give you gloves. You can leave that in as long as you want, but after about three hours it’s as saturated as it’s ever going to get. Done!” She snapped yet another shower cap over his head; where was she getting them all from? 

“Already?” Eren asked. He stood up and switched spots with Armin. 

“Yup. Short hair’s easy.” Sasha switched out her gloves again and picked up two half-empty bottles of orange dye from the floor. “Neon or pumpkin?”

“Which one will look better if I only want it really light?”

“Neon, I think. If you’re going for a pastel orange, you should wash it out after half an hour, and shampoo it plenty. I’ll put it in lightly, too.” She started picking out strands from the back and spreading the dye in. 

“Before you do the front, could I get a picture?” Eren asked. Armin nodded, and he snapped one on his phone. “To Facebook!”

“Eren!”

“Oh, come on; I have to share your new colour.” Eren grinned while he typed. Mikasa read over his shoulder and snickered. “The newest look this spring is the White Mushroom!”

Armin laughed, and Sasha joined in after her. 

\---

Long after Eren and Armin had dyed and thoroughly washed their hair; after Mikasa and Sasha had left for and returned from rehearsal; after Eren and Armin had fallen asleep (in separate beds, because it was apparent they couldn’t keep their hands off each other), Eren awoke to a slight feeling of vertigo, which dissipated quickly but left him wide awake. His limbs were like lead, and he was comfortable, so he didn’t move; he just laid there, waiting for sleep to take him once more. 

The room was silent but for the low hum of the heater, and a soft orange glow from the streetlamps and the winter sky bounced off the walls, making everything sepia-toned in Eren’s limited range of vision. He lay on his front, with his face turned to the room and half of it, including one eye, sunken into his pillow. His blankets were pulled up to his neck and a corner flopped over the back of his head, keeping him as warm as he was going to get and still be able to breathe. 

There was a slight rustling from Armin’s bed, and she started to turn over; Eren shut his open eye and slowed his breathing until he heard her turn back over. He opened his eye just a little, and she was laying on her side, facing the wall. 

He was ready to settle back into the wait for sleep to come, but he heard something. It was the kind of something that reminded him of the rules of roommateship. 

_#5: If your roommate is masturbating quietly, ignore it._

She was quiet; in fact, save for a few low whines, the only noise she made was a little heavy breathing and the rustling of her sheets. Still, Eren knew he was witnessing something private, something he shouldn’t be awake for. 

But he couldn’t stop watching. 

Not that he could see anything; she remained turned away from him, and under her blankets. And it wasn’t the first time he’d seen -- or heard -- her in such pleasure; they’d gotten off together just rubbing against each other through their clothes a little over a week earlier. But it was the first time he’d been conscious and present while she pleasured herself. 

It wasn’t hard to imagine that she was thinking of him, so when she whispered Eren’s name, he didn’t feel any surprise. But the way she said it, like it was a secret despite how openly she admitted she loved him, made him feel something, he didn’t know what. All he knew was that he wanted to hear her moan his name at the top of her lungs, and he’d do whatever it took -- with her, with Levi, with himself -- to love her the way she deserved to be loved. Wholeheartedly, and honestly, and by someone for whom she was the entire world. 

Her breath stuck in her throat, and she curled up tighter, and Eren knew she’d come. After she caught her breath, she turned once more to check if Eren was awake, and he feigned sleep a second time. He nodded off minutes later, and he dreamed of a star with two planets orbiting synchronously. 

By morning, he didn’t remember the dream at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is from “[Kill Your Heroes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_H77Ledl_I)” by AWOLNATION.


	15. Angel Food Cake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone loves Armin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: talk of past misgendering/transphobia, possible cissexist undertones, and you may want to proceed with caution if you have body image issues or gender dysphoria, whether social or physical. 
> 
> before i get into this chapter, i want to mention that, as i am not a transgender woman, i can’t promise i accurately portrayed armin’s dysphoria. i am trans myself, but i’m non-binary, so most of my descriptions of how armin feels about her body and how others see her come less from my own experiences from what i’ve read from trans women who have shared their experiences in writing. there’s a lot of variation there, as with all people, so i hope i’ve come up with something that’s not only accurate and respectful to trans women, but also to armin as a character. that said, armin is a fictional character, and only one fictional character at that, and i implore you not to take her experience in this fic as representative of all trans women. the same goes for hanji as a non-binary person, by the way, though that’s a little less relevant this chapter.

The Registrar’s office was empty, save for an elderly secretary and a familiar-looking student immersed in her laptop behind the desk. Armin entered a little hesitantly; she’d only ever been in here to add a class before, bringing her first semester one class above the average course load, but now she was here to drop to one below. It evened out, as if she had taken two standard semesters, but it still felt wrong. She’d always been a bit of an overachiever academically. 

“Um. Hi.” 

The student behind the front desk looked up and smiled. She took off her headphones. “Armin, right? You’re here to drop Verman’s class.”

“How did you know?” Armin asked, but then it hit her; this was the girl who had walked out. “Never mind. I remember.”

She nodded slowly. “Yeah, I wanted to drop too. But I complained to the department head, instead. Verman technically violated the non-discrimination policy -- you know, in addition to being a disrespectful ass.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Armin looked down at the Add/Drop forms on the desk. “Is there any way to drop without Verman’s signature?”

“Not this late. But if you think you can wait, the History department is looking into the situation and they might fire him, or at least replace him for this class. Apparently this isn’t the first time he’s had complaints.” She shrugged and leaned forward over the desk. “Or, if you want, you can drop. But I really hope you can stay; you always had such insightful comments on our readings.”

“Who else would teach the class?” As far as Armin knew, this was the first semester that Presidents’ Letters was being taught; no-one else would have the experience, and anyway, it was Verman’s own research going into the curriculum. 

“They’ll find someone.” The student picked one of the Add/Drop forms out of its box and held it out to Armin. “Here; take the form, and if you decide you really do want to drop, I can get Verman’s signature for you. I’m happy to help. But if you want to stick around, I’d love to see you in class again.”

“Thank you.” Armin took the page, folded it up, and tucked it into her pocket. “Who’s the department head? I probably should know.”

“Dot Pixis. I didn’t tell him your name, by the way. His office is next to Verman’s, but he’s never in there; your best bet is to go to the Culinary Arts building and ask if anyone’s seen him.”

“I’ll do that. And you are?”

She smiled brightly. “Hitch. Nice to formally meet you.” Hitch held out a hand, and Armin shook it. 

“Nice to meet you, too.”

“Love the hair, by the way.”

Armin reached up and touched the tips of her hair. She kept forgetting she’d dyed it, as it was just outside her field of view most of the time. The soft orange colour wasn’t a huge change from her natural yellow, but a noticeable one, and Eren was right; she _did_ look pretty cute. “Thanks. I like yours, too.”

There was a little bit of a spring in Armin’s step as she left the Registrar and headed home. She didn’t want to get her hopes up too much; she’d heard of professors being reported for discrimination with no known repercussions, but if Verman had repeated infractions, maybe something would actually come of it this time. And if not, well, at least she still had enough credits for the year that she could drop. 

She went through the Campus Centre to check her mailbox; it was empty, as usual. The bulletin boards boasted more fliers for the upcoming Drag Ball than was probably allowed, and a few students, fingers red from the cold, were drawing advertisements for it on the walkways outside in brightly coloured sidewalk chalk. Drag Ball was still over a week away, so Armin didn’t pay them much mind, aside from a mental note that she’d kind of like to go. 

Eren was face-down on his bed when Armin entered their room, and he groaned loudly. 

“No luck this time, either?” Armin asked. 

“Huh?”

“You’ve been trying to make up with Levi, right?” She set her bag down on her desk and took her finished and printed paper out, transferring it to the proper folder for handing in. “Give him some time.”

“But, but!” Eren stammered a few times; he wasn’t trying to keep his actions secret from Armin, but he also didn’t know she knew what he’d been doing. “I think he’s avoiding me.”

“Like I said, give him time. Maybe he’s not ready to make up yet.”

“Yeah, maybe. It’s just weird; he had the same one student in his office for the whole hour, and then he just ran out, saying he didn’t have time to talk. He barely even looked at me.” 

Armin picked up a pillow off her bad and hurled it across the room at Eren; it smacked into the wall and then fell on his head. “You’re ridiculous. Get up; it’s time for dinner.”

“Not hungry.”

“Nope, I don’t think so.” Armin stomped over and grabbed his arm to drag him out of bed; Eren resisted by remaining a deadweight lump. “Don’t make me get Mikasa in here!”

Eren groaned again and reluctantly got out of bed. 

Dinner was build-your-own-burritos. As per usual, this led to a burrito-building contest of who could put the most fillings in their burrito without it falling apart. Two tortillas per burrito were allowed, but it still usually ended in a full table’s worth of failures, with everyone’s burrito exploding in their hands a few bites in, but it was fun nonetheless. 

Long since reduced to eating burrito-flavoured mush with spoons and forks, Mikasa and Sasha leaned shoulder-to-shoulder, yawning intermittently. Their full schedules, with classes, homework, fencing or archery, and rehearsal working together to reduce them down to an absolute minimum of sleep, were taking the expected toll on them. Jean was only slightly better off; he had cut back on trips to the rock wall since starting Rocky Horror, so he wasn’t completely exhausted, but he was wearing thick glasses instead of his usual contacts and he rubbed at his eyes every few minutes. 

Armin scooped up some soggy tortilla and beef chili filling, and sparing a glance at Eren, who was sprawled over the table and picking listlessly at his burrito volcano, she listened intently to Connie’s description of his elaborate Drag Ball costume. 

“Well, I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ve already got my wig, and Sasha said I can borrow her heels, and I’ve got a friend turning some of my old clothes into a dress with fuckloads of sequins, so I think it’ll be pretty awesome. So now I’ve got two weeks to perfect my makeup. I think I might shave my eyebrows and draw them on.”

“Have fun with that.” Armin piled together another spoonful, and this time it consisted mostly of guacamole and lettuce. 

“Are you going?” Connie asked.

“I want to, but I don’t have any ideas about what I’ll wear.”

“You don’t have to go in drag, you know,” Jean interjected. “Connie just wants to win the contest.”

“I know, but I’d like to,” Armin said. “If I go dressed as myself, people are just going to see what they want to see. If I go in costume, people will see what I want them to see.”

“That is the most profound piece of ironic wisdom I’ve heard all week,” Jean said. “And that’s saying a lot.”

“I don’t get it,” Connie said, so Armin explained. 

“If I wear what I usually wear, people will think I’m just in street clothes, and they’ll probably assume I’m a guy unless they know. If I wear a dress, well, I’m pretty sure they’ll think I’m in drag. But if I go in costume, specifically as a man, and as someone recognisable, then they’ll get it -- in drag as a man, so not a man at all.”

“Oh.” Connie stuck a finger between his teeth and chewed the skin a little while he thought. “So you need some suggestions of recognisable men. I can try and help with that.”

“That’d be great. I’d like something flashy, but I don’t know if there’s anyone--”

Connie held up his hands, signalling for Armin to stop that train of thought. “ _Armin_. Trust me. I can do flashy.” He grinned, the wheels already turning in his brain. 

\---

Most of Armin’s pants were hanging over the side of her laundry basket; she doubted at first that they were all dirty, but a quick sniff at each pair told her that they definitely needed washing. She didn’t want to wear a dress to the Anatomy studio again, not after she’d nearly ruined Mikasa’s the week before, so she was left with that one pair of skinny jeans she’d bought a year earlier as part of a short series of ill-advised fashion choices. She’d worn them once and never again, but she’d kept them because as uncomfortable as they were, they _did_ look good on her in a most unlikely turn of events. 

Eren came back from his shower while Armin was laying on her bed, flat on her back, still shirtless and trying to force the button to close. 

Armin lifted her hips and yanked the waistband up another inch. She grunted loudly, and Eren stopped towel-drying his hair to stare at her. 

Finding it no easier to close her pants, Armin let go of them and rested her aching fingers. “I swear on my life I’m not trying to seduce you this time. My pants are too tight.”

“Need some help?”

Armin lifted her back just enough to recline on her elbows. Eren had one towel draped over his shoulders, and another wrapped around his hips; assuming Eren hadn’t suddenly developed some sort of self-conscious feelings about the size of his dick or how much Armin could see of him, he wasn’t wearing anything underneath. 

On the one hand, this was dangerous territory to be entering with someone she was trying very hard not to take advantage of, especially as she’d decided to forgo underwear in the hopes that these pants would fit better. On the other hand, she really did need the help, and she had to get used to Eren touching her as a friend again. 

“If you could, yeah.” Armin fell back against the bed; Eren buttoned her up without issue, the reversed angle giving him an easier time of it. Without thinking, he zipped her up the rest of the way, and her hips jerked a little in surprise. 

Eren yanked his hands away as if burned. “Um. Sorry.” 

“It’s fine.”

“Where did you get those pants anyway?”

She pulled on her shirt and did up the buttons blindly while she watched Eren dress, getting a glimpse of the curve of his ass before he hid it away below underwear, and then there was the the familiar arch of his back, the bumps of his spine, the light musculature of his shoulders. “High school,” she responded, keeping her voice light. She couldn’t _have_ , but she could still _look_ , right?

Once Eren’s back was hidden from her view, Armin’s eyes left him, and she stood and checked herself out in the full-length mirror that leaned against the wall at the foot of her bed. Years earlier, Eren had told her that her male-assigned body had what he called “girl-butt”, and Armin always appreciated that, despite how small she was, she had enough in back to make skinny jeans look good. She noticed Mikasa’s high heels still sitting in the corner by her closet, and thought, what the hell? and slipped them on. 

She couldn’t hold a candle to Eren’s backside, but she appreciated the round rise of her ass nonetheless. 

Eren, fully dressed, appeared behind her in the mirror; the pair appeared to be the same height. “Why do you never wear those jeans?”

“They don’t fit. I can’t get them on by myself, remember?”

“Right.”

Armin bumped her hip against Eren’s and left the mirror to pack up her bag, and she rolled up her drawing and slid it into a shipping tube, the method of transportation that Eren had recommended. “Are you getting breakfast?”

“Yeah.” Something about Eren’s voice sounded off, a little breathless maybe, and when Armin turned to look, she noticed he was a little red-faced and fiddling with the strap of his backpack. 

Had she done something that set him off like this, or was it his own imagination? Oh, right. She’d bent over to get her bag. Ridiculous, hormonal boy. (As if Armin had any room to judge; who was it again that had just stared at Eren’s ass while he got dressed?)

Having stuffed themselves full of eggs and corned beef hash, Armin and Eren arrived to class a half-hour early. The doors were closed, and locked to those without card access; when Eren swiped them in, the lights were off, and he searched around for the switches. 

Eren wasn’t used to getting here so early, nor to having his pick of wall space to hang his homework. Sure, he’d been getting to class a little earlier than usual lately, but not so much that he was the first one there. Armin, on the other hand, wasn’t bothered; she strode right in and, after removing her coat, tacked up her drawings near one of the corners. Eren took the next spot over, and they sat on neighbouring stools nearby to wait for other students to arrive. 

“Is it always going to be like this?” Eren asked, out of the blue.

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean… tiptoeing around each other because we can’t help how we feel.”

“Are you tiptoeing?” Armin could recall a number of times that Eren had held himself back, but at least as many times he’d not even bothered, forging ahead with whatever instinct told him to do because he knew she wanted the same. 

Eren shrugged and laughed a little. “Not really, but I think I should be. And it’s… confusing, since you were the one that called us off, but you’re also the one asking me to forget you ever said that.”

“I am sorry about that.”

“I know you are. It’s just that I feel like I have to act differently around you now, for both our sakes, and I don’t know how to do it.”

Armin was about to answer, but she heard footsteps, and looked to the door to see Jean come in. “I don’t know either,” she said. “I’ll figure something out. I don’t think it will always be like this, though.” 

Eren let it go for the time being, and that gave Armin some time to think about it. Her knee-jerk answer would have been, “You don’t have to act differently,” but that wasn’t really true. There were habits they had as friends that didn’t seem any different if they did them in the short time that they’d been sort-of-dating-but-not-really, but now that they _weren’t_ , it was weird. Like the cuddling. And the cheek-kisses. And changing in front of each other. Sure, Armin wanted to do those things, but she knew it would lead to more and that wasn’t the way to go. Not when she was trying to resist. 

It had to be hard on Eren, too; he had the same problem of living with someone with whom he shared a mutual romantic interest, and then he had the added issue of yet _another_ mutual interest with someone who also held reservations about a relationship. 

If only Levi had left it at the way he’d responded to Eren’s awkward advances that first day, brushing him off and leaving him to move on with his life. Maybe Eren would already be over him; he wouldn’t be hanging on the barest chance, at least. Armin would never have felt the need to push Eren away. 

She didn’t want to put up walls, but she would have to if she wanted to keep her friendship with Eren as strong as it was. Between a pair like them, romance, if it ever really came, would be an addition to their friendship, not an upgrade, and blurring the lines between platonic and sexual would only make things harder on them. How exactly could they find their limits? It wasn’t like they could play Sexy Chicken, because neither of them were particularly likely to actually call chicken. 

It might give them some valuable data to work with about where exactly their point of no return was, but. No. 

There was also the fact that there were just some things Armin didn’t want to give up. She loved sleeping in Eren’s bed, for one, now that they’d started doing that again, and even if they couldn’t keep their hands off of each other it was too good for her to let it go. She slept better with him; alone in her bed, she would wake up several times in a single night, sometimes inexplicably hard. She could lose the kisses and the daily views of Eren’s beautiful ass, and she’d miss them, but nowhere near as much as warm cuddles pressed together in one of their tiny beds. She’d missed it so much, _too much_ , during high school, and she could only hope Eren liked it as much as she did. 

Mikasa came in mere minutes before class started, and Sasha was still eating breakfast from a tupperware bowl behind her. Armin caught Mikasa’s eye, and from that look she knew Mikasa could sense her distress. She’d want to talk about it later, no doubt. Armin cracked her knuckles, suddenly feeling self-conscious under Mikasa’s piercing stare, like she was trying to unravel the mystery of what was bothering Armin from across the room. 

Trying not to dwell on it, Armin refocused her attention on the drawings that had gone up in the time she was lost in her thoughts. She let one leg dangle freely off her stool, and the back of her shoe slipped off her heel and hung precariously from her toes; she clicked the heel lightly against the floor while she assessed the work. 

Eren’s drawing was of her again; no surprise there. Next to Eren’s drawing was one of Jean, but it didn’t look like his feathery, precise style, instead heavier and a little stylised, and it didn’t even show his many piercings or his visible tattoos, so Armin doubted it was the next in a long series of self-portraits. She wondered who drew it. The piece beside it was of Mikasa, and _that_ was definitely Jean’s style. But when did Jean find a moment of Mikasa’s time to sit her down and draw her? 

While Armin looked at another drawing of Mikasa, this one probably done by Sasha if the blocky shading and the slight smudging in the white space was any indication, Shadis started class. He announced a small portraiture contest put on by the Art department, one that anyone could enter, and encouraged them all to submit something before they left class that day. 

Armin tried not to tune out homework critique, especially after Eren was named as one of those being critiqued, but she couldn’t help it; her mind was elsewhere, trying to come up with ways to find out what, exactly, should be her boundaries where Eren was concerned. Her options to finding them, as far as she could fathom, were in fact limited to either Sexy Chicken or waiting and just living out life together, calling out a line wherever and whenever it needed to be drawn. Neither was a reliable option, and if Armin couldn’t come up with anything else, then there probably wasn’t another option. 

Shadis’s voice calling her name yanked Armin out of her thoughts. “Arlert. You’ve been quiet. Anything to say about Springer’s drawing?”

“I. Erm,” she stammered. “I got distracted, sorry.”

“I noticed,” Shadis said gruffly. “It’s the one next to Jager’s. I think you can figure it out.”

“Yeah.” So the portrait of Jean was Connie’s. Armin definitely saw it this time around; the resemblance to Connie’s previous work showed through now that the connection was made. “When I first saw it, my immediate thought was that it was Jean’s.” A few students chuckled. “But then I thought, no, it doesn’t look like Jean’s work at all. This is a little stylised, where Jean’s is pretty pure realism, and Connie’s lines are darker and thicker. To me, it gives off this feeling of power in the subject, especially when you add it to what Jean’s wearing.” Another chuckle; Armin had pretty much bullshitted that, but Shadis looked… not impressed exactly, but at least not visibly annoyed, so Armin considered her comment a success. 

She looked back to her own page, and wondered what feeling her own drawing style inspired. Hesitancy, probably. Nervousness. Maybe a little fear; fear of getting it wrong, of making a mistake, and in some ways even of improving. Armin knew where her weaknesses were in her work (and there were a lot of them), and sometimes she wondered if improving upon them would make her lose sight of what those weaknesses actually were. 

Eren’s work, in the middle, had a lot of similarities to the drawings on either side; the final lines were dark, like Connie’s, but only after he’d done a dance of light marks characteristic of the determined perfectionist he was. Eren’s shading was light and blocky like Armin’s, there more to denote depth than show precise shadows, and it was the only part of the drawing that _wasn’t_ precise. Yet the shadows seemed right, somehow, succeeding in an illusion of depth where Armin’s looked flat. That was probably a result of the many years of practice Eren had put into his drawing skills. Somehow, the drawing also conveyed an unrealistic _bigness_ , as if the Armin on the page was ten feet tall; as Eren had always drawn very small before, it was probably an accidental effect of him getting used to the larger drawings. 

Critique switched over to Eren’s drawing, and Armin raised her hand immediately to share her “bigness” observation; hopefully, Shadis wouldn’t call on her again. 

Eren looked at Armin, a little confused, and Armin shrugged. She couldn’t really explain what in the drawing caused that particular effect. Eren seemed to let it go, at least for the time being. 

Armin stared back at the drawings, trying to look engaged, but her mind continued to wander. She thought about her boundaries that she’d already found she shouldn’t cross with Eren. No more kissing and minimal nudity, obviously, but there was more. They’d have to cut down on the all-too-serious flirting, of course. Armin didn’t want to bring it up, but she was pretty sure Eren had been awake a few times while she touched herself; she should probably keep that to times when Eren wasn’t around, just in case. And maybe…

Maybe they shouldn’t draw each other anymore. 

Armin couldn’t count the number of times she’d noticed her breath quicken while she traced the contours of Eren’s body. Whether it was his denim-clad legs or his exposed neck and collar, it was all Eren, and it was all enticing and effortlessly sensual -- or maybe that was just how Armin saw him. She would try to observe his face, and then their eyes would meet, and Eren’s pupils would be blown as wide as Armin was sure her own were, and they’d stare at each other, caught in the moment until one of them blinked and the magic was lost -- until the next time. 

She’d draw Eren’s lips (awkwardly, hesitantly, and always not-quite-right, but she was getting better) and she’d think about kissing them again, and again, and again. She’d block out the shadows on his neck and want to suck a bruise into the soft skin there. She’d mark the wrinkles in his shirt, and want to wrestle it off of him; she’d find the right line to show the curve of his spine, and she’d want to rake her nails down his back. Her hands would tremble over the stiff, bunched-up denim at his hips and knees; she’d try to hold in a sigh, try to hold herself back before she ended up reaching out to touch him, and then she’d sigh anyway, and she’d redouble her efforts to look at Eren like an object while she drew him. 

It never quite worked. 

The hardest part was his hands. Not only because they always moved while he drew, so she had to pick a position and just do her best, but also because she wanted to feel those fingers all over her and -- her breath hitched, and she hoped no-one noticed -- inside her… 

Armin shivered, and she used every ounce of her self control to throw that thought aside before it went any further. 

She wouldn’t be able to draw Eren anymore. She couldn’t take it. Not until she could look at him and feel no romantic or sexual pull at all. It was just too much. 

Maybe she could just wait until the second half of their studio hours, until Mikasa was out of Fencing practice and they could draw each other. Or Armin could just skip out on their studio hours completely, and find someone else to draw. She had other friends. 

A mutual crush shouldn’t be a reason to avoid someone, and Armin felt embarrassed that it had come to this point that she was actually considering spending less time with Eren. She didn’t want to cut out her best friend from her life. 

With that thought in Armin’s mind, critique ended, and she moved in a little bit of a daze to get her materials and find a drawing horse. She didn’t notice until they were on the stand that there were two models, both people she knew -- Hitch, who smiled at her, and Annie. Armin tried to catch Annie’s eye with a questioning look; she was in the afternoon Anatomy studio, and Armin didn’t even know she was a model in the first place. 

Professor Shadis started to explain the day’s assignment. “Obviously we have two models today. We’re going to start with some gesture drawings, and then two long poses. I want you all to draw both of them every time; focus on the relations of their proportions, both individually and together, and also focus on the space between and around them as its own object to aid in the placement of the models. Are you ladies ready?” Having finished stretching, Hitch and Annie nodded. “Begin.”

From their first pose, Armin could tell Hitch was a dancer, too, but probably skilled more so in classical forms, whereas Annie was more proficient in modern dance and martial arts. She had the same grace and fluidity in her poses and movements as Annie, but was lighter on her feet and didn’t give off the same aura of power and impenetrability. At first they posed separately, though their movements complemented each other’s, and as the gestures went on they seemed to read off each others’ intentions and they posed as a pair, never touching but obviously creating a sort of conversation between the motions of their bodies. 

Armin wondered if anyone else noticed (they probably did) how some of their poses were quite overtly sexual, and not just because they were nude. At one point, Hitch sank down to her knees, then leaned back with her arms over her head and her back arched until her hands touched the floor behind her; Annie stepped one foot between Hitch’s legs and leaned over her, one hand outstretched toward Hitch’s face. 

Armin shivered. Her back was to the windows, and it seemed to radiate cold -- but that was ridiculous. Heat radiated, not cold. But her spine prickled nonetheless. Maybe it wasn’t the cold at all… Armin didn’t usually find herself attracted to girls, but the way they interacted seemed so effortless and entrancing that Armin found herself affected anyway. 

The rapid changes in poses and the constant movement kept hold of Armin’s attention through a half-hour’s worth of minute-long gesture drawings, but after a short break Annie and Hitch settled onto a chair and a cushion for their first seated long pose, and Armin’s mind wandered again. It wandered to the hairs on her arms that still stood on end in the cold, and the hyper-sensitivity that made her suppress a shiver every time she moved and her shirt sleeves shifted, brushing the hairs this way and that. The hair on her legs was starting to grow back, too, and her tight jeans rubbed against her legs as she moved, catching on the stubble. She’d shaved them twice in the last week. It was time consuming and most of the girls at Wall didn’t bother anyway, but now that she had experienced smooth legs she noticed that the short hairs would catch in the seams of her pants, and it distracted her from drawing, so she’d probably keep it up. 

She looked to the models again. Annie, in the chair, faced sideways relative to Armin; Hitch, kneeling on a cushion, mostly was turned towards Armin, though her face was directed opposite to Annie. With the state of her own legs present in her mind, that was the first thing she noticed about them. Hitch’s legs were shaved, freshly so, as was the entire rest of her body; at first, Armin thought Annie’s legs were too, but when she looked closer she noticed that, unlike her own body hair, Annie’s was as light as that on her head, and she’d done nothing to rid herself of it. In fact, from this angle, and with one arm thrown behind her head, it was fairly noticeable that Annie didn’t shave her underarms, either. There was even some hair on Annie’s breasts (more, in fact, than grew on Armin’s own chest) and Armin hadn’t known cisgender girls actually grew hair there, but it seemed to suit her. 

Squinting, Armin could see a little of herself in each of these girls. In Annie’s bright blue eyes, and the blonde bangs that hung on either side of her face, the colour and style that Armin’s had been until recently; in Hitch’s upturned nose and the slight curl of her lips that was for her a resting disposition, but for Armin was an indication of true happiness. She saw Hitch’s shoulders, wide for a girl her size, and Annie’s hips, narrow even for someone so small, and wondered, not for the first time, why they looked to fit perfectly on these girls, but on Armin, they were indicators that something about her wasn’t what people expected a girl to be. 

“Arlert.” Professor Shadis looked over her shoulder. “You haven’t drawn anything in ten minutes.”

“Sorry, Professor.” Indeed, Armin had only the very basics of a drawing started, just skeleton stick figures and a few circles, barely more than a gesture drawing. “I’m a little out of it today, I guess.”

“Do you need to be excused?” Something about the way Shadis asked gave Armin the impression that he wasn’t too keen on the idea. 

“No. I’ll get back in it.”

“You better. Remember, the only person whose time you’re wasting is yours.” He took another long look at Armin’s drawing. “Your proportions are decent, but work on your grounding. Let’s talk about your homework.”

Armin dropped her charcoal and followed him to the corner where her drawing was tacked up. Homework check happened every week, but it never failed to make her nervous, and she was still shivering, so she crossed her arms and hunched over a little to keep her warmth in. 

Shadis must have mistaken her actions as betraying shame, because he said, “Don’t look so scared, Arlert. You’re improving a lot.”

“I’m still not that good.”

Shadis shrugged. “I wouldn’t call you naturally talented, but then, Jager said he wasn’t either when he was younger, and his advisor tells me he’s now one of the best in his year. Don’t doubt yourself.”

Armin snorted. “Respectfully, sir, I think my particular brand of determination is more suited for the Humanities.”

“Fair enough. Your accuracy is getting better; I can tell you’re really looking at him when you draw him. I want you to try a different shading method next week; that might fix some of the flatness. Alright, get back to work.”

\---

After lunch, Eren went back to the art building. He still had to do some last-minute fixes on his Digital Art homework before class, so Armin had their room to herself until dinner. 

She’d spent the morning staring at Hitch and Annie and trying to focus on her drawings of them, trying not to let her mind wander into thoughts of Eren or the ways her body was fine, just fine, but not what she wanted to see. With the door locked, and a note on it telling Eren to knock first just in case, Armin stripped off her clothes and stood in front of her full-length mirror. 

She thought back to when she was young, and she’d wished over and over that she was more manly, because then maybe she’d stop feeling like there was something wrong with her, and maybe she’d stop feeling a little bit sick every time someone called her a boy. She didn’t even care if the bullies stopped hounding her; she just wanted to feel okay with herself. Now she knew better; she knew she’d probably have these feelings no matter what she looked like. Unfortunately, that didn’t make it any easier to have them. 

She was chubby as a child, but grew up rail-thin in the way that only teenagers who spent way too much time running from bullies ever were. The Freshman 15 and a change in her surroundings had done her some good; she no longer looked like a light wind would knock her over, but she still had a ways to go before “healthy” could be a word she’d use to describe herself. She was flat-chested, as expected for someone whose naturally prominent sex hormone was testosterone, and the highest fat concentration on her body was on her butt, which _wasn’t_ expected, but was certainly appreciated. She had pretty strong leg muscles from all the running, her calves especially defined, though her stamina still sucked and the rest of her body was relatively weak and it showed. Her hips were narrow, and her shoulders were just wide enough to bother her. 

All in all, hers wasn’t a bad body. It just wasn’t the one she wanted. 

She wouldn’t even change that much. Hell, if she had boobs, she wouldn’t change another damn thing. She liked her dick well enough, knew how to use it; her hips and shoulders weren’t _that_ noticeably masculine, and enough people had taken her to be a girl or told her she looked like one even before she came out that she knew she could pass. But if anyone got a good look, rather than a glance, they’d “correct” themselves, and she knew all the things that gave her away. 

It was hard to feel like she was being honest about who she was when she could so easily see what it was that made her different from most girls. Even with her clothes on, she either looked like a twink or a casual transvestite; with her clothes off, she looked like a boy. She never looked like herself. 

“She, her, woman,” she said to the mirror. “She, her, woman.”

How did Eren and Mikasa manage to always call her a woman? They hadn’t forgotten, not even once, since she’d told them, while Armin couldn’t even remember what to call herself. 

“She, her, woman.”

She ran her right hand down her chest, fingers lightly grazing over a nipple; it was so easy to slip into imagining something soft and round there for her to squeeze under her palm, but that wasn’t what this was about. It wasn’t about fantasy. It was about reality, and finding a way to love herself as she was, for as long as she was this way. 

Maybe someday, she could change. But for now, this was her body, and she would learn to love it. 

“She, her, woman.” She flicked over her nipple again, facing the somewhat harsh reality that was the flatness underneath. Her breath stuttered, and she did it again, and it started to feel good, but it also started to feel wrong. “She, her, woman.” She pressed down, digging the heel of her hand into thin pectoral muscle, and she breathed in deep. “She, her, woman.” Tears started to prickle at her eyes, and at first she tried to hold them back, but then realised it would be counter-productive to reject any part of her. Once she made the decision to let the tears flow, the pressure in her eyes lessened, and the tears slowly dried before they even fell. 

When the pressure in her stomach eased, she moved her other hand, curving it over the jut of her left hip and rubbing lightly. Her right hand travelled up to her neck, pressing over her Adam’s apple; she swallowed, and it bobbed against her hand, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Her hand tickled, but she couldn’t laugh. She swallowed again, this time around a lump in her throat. 

Repeating her mantra, her left hand lowered, fingers brushed through her pubic hair -- trimmed, not shaved, because she wasn’t that brave -- and loosely grasped her cock. Somehow, she’d been touching herself infinitely more since she came out than before. Once, her penis had been a part of her that told her she could never be a girl; now, it was a part of her that couldn’t stop her from being a girl. 

_That’s right_ , she thought. _It can’t stop me._ She pressed lightly on her neck, then let go as she stroked her cock slowly. 

“You can’t stop me,” she said to her Adam’s apple. 

Her hand rested on one collarbone, her fingers extending towards her shoulder. “You can’t stop me.” It dropped again to her chest, and she played with a nipple again. “You, ah, can’t stop me.” She touched her hip, and in a whisper, said for the last time, “You can’t stop me.”

Armin reached her hand forward and rested it on the wall next to her mirror, and she met her reflection’s eyes. She continued to stroke herself, and she watched her pupils blow wide with arousal. 

“I am a woman. A lady,” she whispered. “A really fucking cute girl. And I always will be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reminder: my tumblr is [nouveauqueer](http://nouveauqueer.tumblr.com), and i track the tag [#fic: orange](http://tumblr.com/tagged/fic:+orange).
> 
> **edit: WHOA THERE! before going to the next chapter, you should read this companion piece:[LIME](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2021454).**


	16. Pretty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ends, beginnings, and lots of art. A mental image you didn’t need. Hanji is not a titan. I feel like there should be some dancing silverware in the last scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **HEY, WAIT! i’ve written a small prequel of sorts,[lime](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2021454), about when hanji and levi first met. you’ll want to read it before this chapter. **

Two weeks into rehearsals, the Rocky Horror cast started practicing in costume. The idea was that the more time they spent rehearsing in their corsets, the less likely it would be that someone would lace it wrong and pass out during a performance. 

Some of the actors had more problems with this than others. 

“I don’t get it, I just bought this a few weeks ago.” Sasha let out as much air as she could from her lungs and pulled in her stomach; Mikasa yanked on the laces in the back of her corset one last time, then tied them. 

“It’s fine. It fits, they just sent laces that were too short. I don’t mind lacing it up for you. How’s your breathing?”

Sasha took a deep breath. “Fine. Same as usual.” She rubbed the lower part of the corset. “My tummy hurts, though.” 

Reiner walked past on his way to the stage; he was already in his corset, though he was still waiting for his special-order heels to get shipped. “It’ll get better. By next week you won’t even notice it.”

“Really?”

“Well, hopefully. Hey, guys!” He left the girls to harass the small crew they’d procured, headed by Bertholdt. “How’s our set looking?” Their conversation faded to chatter as Reiner neared the group. 

“Are they dating?” Sasha wondered aloud.

“Who? Reiner and Bertholdt?” Mikasa asked. Sasha nodded. “No-one knows for sure, but everyone thinks so. Whenever someone asks, Reiner laughs and Bertholdt turns bright red, but they never answer.” At that moment, Ymir called out a list of names, including Mikasa and Sasha, and they joined the group on the stage; about half of the cast was assembled there to rehearse the Phantoms’ parts. 

Some time later, long after everyone was sweaty and tired, but before they reached the point at which partial numbness set in and a second wave of adrenaline kicked them into full energy just as rehearsal was about to end, one of the girls who’d just finished up practicing Columbia’s part dragged Reiner over by the ear. “I found this guy creeping on us while we were changing.”

“I wasn’t creeping! I swear.” Reiner stumbled to a stop next to Ymir; the girl who had him by the ear was at least a foot shorter than him, so he was doubled over while she dragged him, and she tugged on his ear again after she stopped him. “I was just walking by. We don’t even have separate dressing rooms.”

“Bullshit!” the girl shouted. “You were staring.”

Ymir took a deep breath and let it out slowly, closing her eyes to express that she didn’t believe she was being paid enough to deal with this shit. “Really, Reiner. I never pegged you as the kind of guy to be interested in girls, much less the kind to go and make them uncomfortable like that.”

By this point, Sasha was really paying attention, and she witnessed for the first time Reiner’s impulsive laugh as a response to the insinuation that he was gay. “Well,” he responded, “I never took you as the kind of woman to be interested in men, either.”

“Well spotted.” Ymir finally looked at him, but with a bit of contempt. “Did you find that out from my wife? Stop staring at the girls.”

“I wasn’t-- fine. Fine. I won’t stare.”

The girl let go of Reiner’s ear and glared at him before returning to the little hallway backstage where they all changed. Reiner just stood there, shifting between his feet, looking unsure of what to do. Mikasa nudged Sasha’s arm and nodded over her shoulder at the other side of their stage, where Bertholdt was up on a ladder passing wood down to the other crew members. The raised storage area, they knew, was clearly visible from the opposite end of the dressing hallway. 

It was also well within earshot of the stage, and just close enough that they could see Bertholdt’s face was beet red. 

Ymir shooed Reiner with a wave of her hand. “Scram. Your group is done for the day; if you’re gonna stick around, go help Turtle with the heavy lifting.”

“His name is Bertholdt.”

“Not if his stage crew keeps working so slow, it isn’t. Shoo. All right,” she addressed her group, “show me what I just taught you.” Ymir played the music for the dance they’d just finished learning, and the group moved in unison. 

Sasha, a master at multi-tasking, tried to start a conversation with Ymir while she danced. “You have a wife?”

Ymir turned her slightly contemptuous stare onto Sasha. “Of course I do. Why else would we have the same last name? We’re certainly not related.”

“Who has the same last name?”

“What? Krista! Did you really not know that?”

Sasha waited until after she completed a turn to respond. “I didn’t know what your last name was. Krista sends all our e-mails.”

“I didn’t know either,” Mikasa said. A few others agreed with her. 

“I knew,” Jean said. “But that’s only because I’ve taken your class before.”

Ymir laughed then -- cackled, more like -- and it was the first time most of the cast had seen her so full of mirth. She shouted across the stage: “Babe! They didn’t know we’re married!”

Krista, who was dwarfed where she stood between Bertholdt and a still-corseted Reiner, grinned back. 

“I thought you were a lot younger than her, though,” Sasha said. 

Ymir’s smile fell a little. “I… guess I am. It’s a little complicated. And aren’t you supposed to be focussing?”

“Yes, ma’am.” 

\---

“Today’s our last day together, isn’t it?”

Despite Petra’s unassuming smile, Levi was nervous. He looked at the painting in front of him; they still had all day, but there was so much work left to do, and it made him feel a little sick to know how much he’d have to rush today. “Yes. No distractions.”

“If you say so.” Petra stayed quiet, unusually so, and while Levi usually loved to hear her chatter while he painted, he needed to focus. She kept her breaks blessedly short, allowing him to get right back into painting with minimal interruption. She had even shown up this morning with enough Chinese food to last them both a few days, and she ended up feeding him throughout the day so he wouldn’t have to waste time washing his hands. 

He couldn’t have asked for someone better to support him through this ordeal; Petra was a solid stone pillar, only speaking to encourage, and staying well after their intended end hour all week. She’d even taken off her other job Thursday evening so he could squeeze in a few more hours of work, never once complaining. 

When this was all over, he’d throw her a damn party to thank her. In Paris. For a week. With strippers. 

Levi carefully, almost lovingly, marked each pore and bump, each wrinkle in her nipples, each tiny stretch mark in her underboob, even the few drops of nervous sweat that had accumulated in her cleavage. She was just as worried as he was, though for different reasons; Petra worried about Levi’s health, and if it was really good for him to work this much. She’d voiced that concern once, and he’d brushed it off, saying he really didn’t have a choice if he wanted to show at Stohess. There had been an icy challenge in Levi’s eyes, though; one that told her not to bring it up again. 

When Levi’s hands started to shake, Petra stood up and eased the brush out of his hand. “It’s time for dinner. Come on, you can’t work on an empty stomach.”

“It looks like shit.” 

Petra took a look at his nearly-finished painting. It looked incredible, as always, and she had the strangest urge to bury her face in the three-foot-high cleavage and motorboat her own gargantuan breasts. “I bet you say that about every painting. Come on; I’ll even let you use my chest as a pillow if you want.”

“Your tits are too small for that.” He continued to look like his world was ending, but Levi stood anyway, relinquishing his paintbrush. 

She led him over to the kitchen table; when he tried to sit down, she grabbed his arm. “No. Your ass is probably numb at this point. Stay on your feet for a few minutes while I feed you.” Petra picked up the chopsticks and fed Levi orange chicken a piece at a time, munching on egg rolls while he chewed. “I feel like I’m taking care of a child.”

“You’d probably be a good parent.”

Petra smiled. “You think so? Maybe I’ll adopt someday.”

“What, you wouldn’t want to drop a watermelon yourself?”

She laughed and shoved another piece of chicken in his mouth. “No. The only man who I’d want to father my child is Oluo, and, well. That’s not particularly likely, given that his balls are filled with silicone.”

Levi swallowed and asked, “What about your other boyfriends?”

“Gunther and Erd don’t live with me; I’d prefer to have the father around, you know? Also, they don’t want kids.” She held out another piece of chicken to Levi, and he leaned forward and grabbed it between his teeth. “Might be nice to adopt, though. I know there are plenty of kids who need a home.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Levi’s tone was relatively light, but his tired eyes held hers with an intensity that told her he really meant it. Petra didn’t know a lot about his past, but she knew Levi had spent a decade bouncing around between foster homes that didn’t want to deal with the finicky, rude child he’d been, so she knew exactly where his protective feelings about orphans and abandoned children came from. 

She gave him another piece of chicken and ruffled his hair. “I’ll make sure to raise a dozen future Levis just for you.”

“Oh, God, no. Don’t raise more of me. One Levi is enough of a threat to humanity.”

Petra stayed through the night; in fact, she insisted on it when Levi asked to photograph her so he could continue working all night. “I don’t have work tomorrow, anyway. I’ll sleep when you do.” 

Levi did not, in fact, sleep at all; with bags forming under his eyes and increasingly dark and bitter cups of coffee fueling him, he stayed up through dusk, midnight, and dawn, with memories of all-nighters at Wall flickering behind his eyes every time he blinked. His eyes burned when the sun finally came up at six-thirty, but even as he and Petra glanced blearily at each other, he just sighed and kept working. He’d have to start his day soon; he had a class to teach at nine, and he wasn’t about to give a classroom full of slackers the day off, no matter how little he’d slept or how unlikely it was that he’d even be able to shower before he got there. 

He felt disgusting. His clothes were covered in little flecks of paint, because he was rushing too much to keep himself clean; he’d replaced his latex gloves at least five times, but his palms still sweated profusely and stuck to the plastic, the powder inside long since soaked through and collecting in the grooves of his hands. He was sweaty under his clothes, too, and he was pretty sure he smelled like First Wok’s kitchen, given that he and Petra had eaten their way through half of their menu over the last twenty-four hours. Cold white and brown rice sides, a few things of noodles or fried rice that were too difficult to handle quickly, a pile of empty takeout containers, and a whole bag of fortune cookies and those fried cracker things still sat on Levi’s kitchen table, and he wouldn’t get to cleaning up until after class. 

But, bless the ivy-covered walls of Sina Quad, by seven-thirty he was just about done. All that was left was to carefully trace the four or five hairs that surrounded each of Petra’s areolas, and he could let the damn thing dry. 

“You did so well,” Petra said when he stood and set his pallette down. Her voice was thick with sleepiness, and her eyes were red and eyelids drooping, but she gave Levi a genuine smile. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks, Mom,” he replied, but he could feel a little bit of joy creep into his eyes. For all that he’d rushed, the painting looked _good_. And yeah, he was a little proud of himself, too. “You can sleep here, if you want. Take my bed. I need to get ready for class.”

“You can’t call in sick?”

“Hell no. Those lazy little bastards deserve every second of my crabby ass.” He cleaned off his brushes, then headed into his bathroom. Eight-thirty was too late for a full shower, but he could rinse off and get the paint off his wrists, at least. His clothes might be a lost cause, but then again, he’d probably wear them throughout his torturous next few months with acrylics and speed-hyperrealism. At least he’d made a point to wear the ink-splattered pants from the last time he’d really spoken to Eren, so he only had to ruin one pair of jeans. 

The heat of a boiling shower calmed Levi somewhat, but not enough that he felt like any less of a zombie. His students would probably take one look at him and burst into tears; he looked ready to kill something, paler than usual and with honest-to-God bruises forming under his eyes. 

“I’m too damn old for this,” he said to his reflection in the slightly foggy bathroom mirror, as he lined his eyes in black and tried his best not to pass out cold on the tile floor. 

Petra was already asleep on his bed when Levi entered his room, butt-naked and pulling on the nearest clean clothes he could find. He envied her, but he also was incredibly grateful; he left a little kiss on her forehead, then left the apartment with a takeout container of cold beef chow fun, the last cup of coffee, and a feeling of accomplishment. 

\---

Instead of going directly back to Shiga house after Anatomy, Armin headed for the Culinary Arts building. She asked around, and finally found Pixis in one of the baking kitchens, taste-testing for a group of freshmen. He combed a few crumbs out of his moustache and smiled serenely while he chewed. 

“Excellent,” he said, and two of the students high-fived each other. 

“Excuse me?” Armin stepped more fully into the kitchen. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Not at all,” Pixis answered. The students whispered to each other while they scarfed down the rest of their small cake, and Pixis removed his apron and came over to Armin. “Do I know you?”

“No. Well, sort of. Hitch told you about me.”

“I see.” He turned serious, and headed for the door. “Let’s go somewhere more private, hm?”

Armin followed him all the way to an office on the third floor; the name on the door read Ian Dietrich, but Pixis unlocked it with his own key and ushered her in. He shut the door behind them. 

Pixis sat down in the spinning office chair behind the desk; Armin took one of the chairs opposite him. He crossed his legs and folded his hands over his raised knee. “Can I have your name?”

“Armin Arlert, sir.”

“ _Sir_. Heh, don’t get called that a lot. So.” He paused to take a deep breath. “You’ve been having problems with Kitts.” 

“Yes. He’s… disrespectful.”

Pixis snorted. “That’s putting it lightly. He’s caused us problems before, and the only reason he’s still here is because the last department head was just as much of -- pardon my French -- just as much of an ass as he is.” He stroked his moustache a few times, then sighed. “I don’t really have a replacement for him. All of the History professors are booked solid; I might be able to get someone from the American Studies department, but they’ll only be able to cover the U.S. part of the curriculum. No-one else has his experience with foreign presidents’ correspondence. I’d just kick him out right now if I could.” He smiled at Armin. “He’ll be out of here at the end of the semester, but that doesn’t help you right now.”

“I have enough credits that I could drop the class.”

Pixis frowned again. “Out of the question. I won’t let anyone’s academics get anywhere less than stellar because of one bigoted professor.”

“I can’t stay in that class with him.” It pained Armin to just give up, but she hadn’t even been able to look at her homework without feeling sick this past week; there was no way she’d actually learn anything with Verman around. 

“I know you can’t.” He scratched at his moustache once more, then smiled. “Actually, I do know someone else with the experience to teach that class. I’d hate to ask this of her, but. Do you know of Rico Brzenska?”

“She retired last year, didn’t she?”

“Yes. She owes me a favour, though. I can’t promise anything by tonight, obviously; you may want to ask someone to lend you their notes. I’m sure Hitch would be more than willing to help. I’ll e-mail you or something when I get a response.”

“Thank you, Professor.”

Pixis waved it off. “No thanks needed. It’s part of my job.”

\---

“Have you slept?”

Levi glared at Hanji, who leaned on his kitchen counter and watched him clean up the mess of Chinese leftovers and containers on his table. “No. And Petra’s in my bed, so hush. I don’t want to wake her.”

“When I told you to work fast, I didn’t mean kill yourself for a few paintings. You need sleep. We can do this tomorrow.”

“No,” Levi insisted. He tossed the last few empty containers into the trash and washed his hands. “I’ll take your pictures, and then I’ll go crawl in next to Petra and start painting you when I wake up.”

“If you’re sure.” Hanji pushed away from the countertop. “Where do you want me?”

“Guest room should be fine. Go get undressed, and I’ll get my camera.” He scrubbed his hands thoroughly, still feeling grimy from not having showered properly, and then he reached for his phone. He headed to the empty second bedroom, clearing out old photos to free up memory as he went. 

The door opened a crack. “I’m ready.”

Levi stepped in. 

He didn’t know what he was expecting, honestly. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to Levi that Hanji had specifically anything under their clothes; the one time he’d tried to imagine Hanji naked, he’d come up with a sort of hazy, Ken-doll-esque body, nothing at all in the way of genitals and a completely smooth chest, not even so much as nipples. 

Seeing Hanji’s bare flesh, well, in the flesh was nothing short of shocking. Levi finally had answers to the questions he’d asked himself so many years ago, when he had first met Hanji and spent a significant amount of time trying to decide what exactly he was seeing, but it made him a little uncomfortable to have those answers at all. Then again, he suspected Hanji was at least as uncomfortable as he was. 

“Surprise!” Hanji joked. “It’s a vagina!”

Levi tried to laugh, he really did, but all that came out was a weak breath. “Yeah.” 

“Come on, check me out. I trust you.”

He stepped into the room fully and shut the door behind him. After a moment of thought, he locked it as well, in case Petra woke up and came looking for him. Levi moved forward, almost on auto-pilot, and circled Hanji, inspecting their body slowly. 

The first thing he had seen when he stepped in was Hanji’s breasts; though easily visible with Hanji nude, they were small, smaller than Petra’s, in fact the smallest Levi had seen on an adult woman -- or, adult… female? The smallest he’d seen on an adult who naturally grew breasts. There were faint stretch marks at their tops, and no indentations on Hanji’s back, indicating they didn’t wear bras. No surprise there; Levi doubted there were bras small enough that weren’t made for children, and it wasn’t like Hanji really needed one. 

Hanji didn’t have the same prominent abdominal muscles they’d once boasted, probably as a result of a more sedentary life of lab work. Their back muscles had softened as well since the one and only time Levi had seen them, and the loss was devastating, but Hanji’s ass was still as spectacular as it had always been, even more so now that it was bare. 

And then, there was the vagina. 

Not that Levi could see it exactly, with Hanji standing, but he could see the curls of their dark pubic hair and no penis in sight, and since they’d just announced it, well. He knew what was there. 

“This is… so strange,” Levi said.

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t really know what I was expecting.” Levi took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s get to work. I’d like to do a full-body portrait, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine with me. How do you want me?”

“Well…” To be honest, he didn’t have any idea. “I want you to pose however you’re comfortable. I… I think I’m going in a new direction with this whole acrylics thing, and you’ll be my test subject.”

“The scientist becomes the lab rat.” Hanji grinned and kneeled on the floor. “This fine?”

“Whatever you want.”

Hanji leaned forward and rested their hands on their knees, which were spread apart just a little. Their chest and the space between their legs was in shadow, cast by their torso under the ceiling-mounted light, but still sort of hazily visible. 

Levi circled around Hanji again, looking for good angles, and their eyes followed him. “Stay still.”

“I want to be looking at you, wherever you paint me from.”

“Do you have a preference of direction?”

“Not really.”

“Do you mind taking off your glasses?”

“Oh, right.” Hanji reached up and took the glasses off, handing them to Levi. “I forget they’re even there.”

Levi tucked the glasses into his shirt pocket. He circled once more before taking his phone out. He took three photos to decide from; one face-on, one diagonally from Hanji’s right side, and one from behind and a little to their left. True to their word, Hanji turned their head and stared at him no matter where he was. 

It shouldn’t have surprised Levi that as soon as he sat down next to Hanji, they came out of that position and leaned on him, but it did nonetheless. He stiffened a little. 

“Jeez, you’re jumpy,” Hanji said. “Let me see.”

Levi showed them the pictures, flipping through them slowly. 

Hanji stopped him after a few cycles on the face-on shot. “I like that one.” 

“You sure?”

“You know it’s the best one.” 

He couldn’t deny it. He’d never really gotten over his love of symbolism (though he hid it well) and there was just too much to pass up in the way Hanji’s more private body was almost, but not quite, visible. “Yeah. But are you okay with it?”

Hanji smiled, and punched him in the arm. “If I had a problem with it, you know I would tell you.”

“You’re fine with the whole world seeing… everything?”

They shrugged. “I trust you to do me justice.”

 _Do you justice?_ Levi thought. What did Hanji even mean by that? Hanji trusted him to, what, make it obvious what gender the person in his painting was? How?

“If you want to do one of the other ones, that’s fine. I’m just telling you, I don’t mind.”

Levi was torn. On the one hand, he wanted to be respectful, as much so as he’d always (accidentally) been, of Hanji’s uncommon gender; on the other hand, his art was supposed to show bodies as they truly were. There was only one way he could think of to do both. “What are your preferred pronouns?”

Hanji’s eyebrow rose. “My what?”

“The pronouns you want people to use for you. That’s what they call it, you know, the Wall students. First day of class, I asked for names, half of them gave me ‘my preferred pronoun is, blank’ as well. I never did ask for yours.”

“I don’t really have one. I mean, I know I said I don’t like people making assumptions about me, but as long as people don’t call me a man or a woman, you know, I don’t really care about pronouns. Why? You don’t use any for me, anyway.”

Levi sighed. “If you had one, I could use it as the title of this painting.”

“Oh.” Hanji shook their head. “I don’t know. I’ve never even thought about it.”

“Well, what’s one you like hearing?”

Hanji took up a bit of body language reminiscent of the Thinker, face pinched in concentration. “You called me ‘them’ for a while.”

“During your senior year. I remember.”

“I thought it was kind of funny, because I’d always been told it was grammatically incorrect to call one person ‘them’, but people do it all the time. I guess that’s good.”

“So if I put that on a plaque next to a painting of you, you’d think it was decently representative?”

“Yeah, I like it.”

“Okay. Then I’ll paint this one.” Levi stood up. “Get back into position. I need to take a few more pictures.” To work from photographs would require at least five, maybe more, at slightly different focal lengths, and then more close-ups for detail; he tapped on his phone’s screen to set up where he wanted the camera to focus, and took about thirty photos total before he let Hanji go.

They dressed slowly; as Levi had expected, they didn’t wear a bra, instead opting for a light tank top under their t-shirt. 

“Are you going to sleep now?” Hanji asked. Levi nodded in response. “Sweet dreams, then. And good luck with painting and finding more models. I’m sure you’ll need it.”

“I haven’t even started looking.” Levi let the two of them out of the spare bedroom and closed the door behind them. 

“If you keep up the gender thing, you’ll probably get a big interest. I know there’s a pretty sizeable community of transgender people in the area.” 

“Don’t I know it.” Levi had already painted a few trans men and women in the years since he’d started nude close-ups. He always ended up falling out of touch with them, like he did nearly all of his models, but not before each of them told him all about the community. “I actually might have to go to the college to get someone on such short notice, though.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“Who?” Oh, but who else would Hanji be asking about? Hanji made a face, and Levi answered them seriously. “No, I haven’t.”

“Are you going to?”

“Maybe. He’s started following me to my office hours.”

Hanji rolled their eyes and threw their head back hard enough for their neck to let out an audible crack as the vertebrae popped. “Why _aren’t_ you talking to him?”

“What the hell am I going to say? I’m sorry I almost hit you? I’m sorry I ran out of the room when you got ink on me and then cried in my office?”

“You cried?” Hanji grinned, in that slightly creepy was that either spelled science or attempted murder in the near future. 

“No! Are you even taking this seriously?”

“Probably more serious than you are. You know what? Go to sleep, and call me when you wake up. You’re being ridiculous.”

Levi knew he was being ridiculous. The thing was, he was of the belief that ignoring certain problems would eventually make them go away; obviously it was an absolutely false belief, but he believed it nonetheless, despite many a failed experiment under this tactic. 

Rationally, Levi knew that if he ever wanted to fix things with Eren -- and he did want to -- he would have to face him directly and actually speak with him. That didn’t make him wish any less that things would just fix themselves. 

He let Hanji out, and after locking the door, stripped down to his underwear and crawled into bed next to Petra. She stirred and rolled over; half awake, she said, “I wasn’t expecting you’d ever come to bed,” and curled around him. He was too tired to push her away. And anyway, it was nice to share his bed with someone who cared for him beyond how much he’d pay them for modelling. 

\---

Armin met up with Hitch and a friend of hers on Tuesday to share notes from their last few classes; Armin had, full of guilt, skipped the night before at professor Pixis’s suggestion, and she had absolutely nothing in the way of notes from the week previous either. Hitch was more than accommodating. The first free moment she got, she agreed to meet up with Armin in the library. Her friend Marlo looked a little uncomfortable, but offered his notes from the day Hitch had walked out; he had to leave after ten minutes for his own class, but he left his notebook with Hitch, and she and Armin did what they could about learning what they had missed. 

Presidents’ Letters was mostly a discussion-based class, so their notes were mostly what other students had said. Professor Verman lectured very little -- unless he disagreed with the students. That could send him into half-hour rants, which happened a little more often than was probably necessary for minor disagreements over interpretation, but so it was. Armin had assumed he was the kind of person who didn’t like being told he was wrong. 

Hitch was sweet, and rarely serious; she made more jokes in their three hours at the library than Armin had heard in the last month, but all were on-topic, and Armin found herself joking around with her nearly as much. 

“I don’t say this in class, obviously…” Armin explained, while they looked at a few pieces of correspondence between Russian monarchs and their families. “But ever since Verman spent half a class ranting on-and-off about how James Buchanan definitely wasn’t gay, I always go into readings assuming that the person writing them probably _was_.”

Hitch exploded into laughter, loud enough that a few students nearby turned to glare at the pair of them. “Oh my god! I do the same thing. But honestly, I’ve done that for years; in my first semester, I had an English professor who went on and on about how Shakespeare was _totally straight_ , and then I wrote a paper purposefully misinterpreting one of John Donne’s poems as a gay anthem, just to piss him off.”

“I guess I should have seen all of this coming after that happened, though.”

“He-ey.” Hitch leaned towards Armin and bumped their shoulders together. “Don’t blame yourself. _He’s_ the asshole here. You should be able to expect better.”

Upon returning to her dorm room, Armin didn’t expect the face full of yellow fabric that greeted her when she opened the door; after a few moments, the confusing mass of fabric sorted itself out in Armin’s mind as a dress. 

“Eren?”

Eren’s face popped out from beside the dress. “Happy Birthday to George Harrison and Renoir!”

“...What?”

“I couldn’t find a relevant holiday. Pistol Patent Day didn’t really seem right, so I went with birthdays. Do you like it?”

Armin took a step back; the dress was on a hanger hooked over the door frame. It was a bright, sunny yellow, with its shoulder straps tied into bows and a darker yellow ribbon around the waist. “This is for me?”

“Yeah!” 

“Where did you find it?”

“Free box.” Eren took the dress down and held on to it, allowing Armin to pass into the room. “I had to fix a few things, but I thought… well, do you like it?” he repeated. 

“Yeah, I do.” She reached for the skirt and pinched the fabric between her fingers. “This is really nice.” 

“Try it on.” Eren shoved it toward her, and she took the dress by the hanger. 

“Um.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Yeah, I…” Armin sighed. This wasn’t how she wanted to bring it up. “I think we shouldn’t… change around each other anymore.”

“Oh.” Eren’s grin fell a little. “Whatever you’re comfortable with, I guess.”

“It’s not a comfort thing. It’s because we watch each other, and--”

“I get it. I’ll step out, okay?”

Armin watched Eren leave and close the door behind him. She sighed again; she knew he was hurt, and she hadn’t meant to hurt him, but if they were really going to try this whole “getting over it” thing, it was necessary. 

Eren leaned against the wall in the hallway, trying his hardest not to bang his head against the plaster behind him. If only he’d been more subtle -- no, if only he hadn’t watched her at all, if only he’d actually tried to keep his distance. He knew he could do anything he set his mind to, so if he was screwing up so much that he was pushing her away, then of course that meant he wasn’t really trying at all. And Armin deserved better. 

“Eren?” Armin poked her head out of their room. “You can come in now.”

Eren stepped back in, and he froze before he could completely shut the door. When he’d first found the dress, he’d worried it would look strange with Armin’s straw-yellow hair, and even when she’d dyed it Eren had only questioned the match more, but it worked perfectly, and the dress fit her well, _really_ well.

“How does it look?” Armin asked. 

“Ah…” Eren knew he was staring, and he could feel his face heating up. “Good. You look really good. And… pretty.”

For a moment, Armin shifted a little uncomfortably, but then she smiled. “You make it really hard not to love you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not, and you shouldn’t be. Besides, I probably would love you anyway.”


	17. Unconditional Love/Getting Somewhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin’s demons. Your heart, breaking, and then mending. Levi’s part of this chapter is also known as “Stop Running Away From Your Problems, You Big Fucking Baby”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: transphobic slurs, gender dysphoria, body image issues, mentioned misgendering, gender/sex essentialism, cissexism. 
> 
> be aware that a lot of these characters have been informed, up to now, primarily by pervasive societal norms and lines of thought, rather than more inclusive and realistic views of sex and gender. their opinions do not always reflect my own, and are subject to change as are any person’s.

For the first time, all of the Anatomy for the Artist students were given a specific assignment: draw yourself. For some, like Jean, this wasn’t new; he’d drawn himself nearly every week so far. Most of the students, though, had found partners in the class or other friends to sit for them, and the task of self-portraiture seemed a little daunting. 

In Armin’s case, the assignment was both a blessing and a curse. It meant she could take a break from the hours-on-end of scattered eyefucking that her drawing sessions with Eren had become, but at the same time, she had to observe herself. Touching herself in front of the mirror once wasn’t enough to fully rid herself of her discomfort with her body, but at least she’d be clothed. 

Still, sitting cater-corner to a mirror leaned against the studio wall brought up a lot of the little, nitpicky anxieties that coalesced into a looming whole of the monster known as gender dysphoria. Armin had to take frequent breaks just to breathe and calm herself down, and she’d look over to Eren, who diligently sketched away at his Drawing 2 assignment. Every so often, Eren caught her staring, and he smiled at her as if he could feel Armin’s inner turmoil from across the room. The smiles comforted her, but they didn’t ease her tension, and they didn’t make it easier to draw herself. 

Her eyes travelled up and down her body, and instead of admiring how her jeans draped over her legs or the way her neck sloped down from her jaw, she criticised them. She looked at her face, and instead of seeing enticing cheekbones and glittering eyes and lips that begged to be kissed, she saw the plain and too familiarly masculine features of her own face. The shadows on her neck around her strong jaw (and to think her family had once called it “delicate”), the wrinkles in her shirt over her flat chest, the bowed curve of her spine under the weight of her horrible posture, the bunched-up denim at her narrow hips and bony knees, even the pen-calloused fingers of her too-large hands; it all made her mind spin in distress and something too much like self-loathing for Armin to be altogether accepting of the emotions. 

She’d been prone to bouts of self-loathing and self-doubt when she was young, and she never properly dealt with it. Her friends had expressed to her that they always saw her as useful, and of course she’d believed them -- Mikasa and Eren wouldn’t lie to her -- but it had only alleviated those specific fears. Now, she found something else in herself to hate, and to doubt, and there was no quick fix for this. Reassurance wouldn’t make herself see her body as any more of a comfortable place for her soul to live. 

Armin could only bring that comfort to herself, but it would take time, and it would take standing strong while a million little micro-aggressions -- people saying she was a man (or trying and failing to be less offensive by saying “male” instead) or calling her “him” or “it” or “sir” or “she-male” or “tranny”. It was all the same. It all boasted of the way that society had taught hate for people like her, people who didn’t become the person they were told to be without question. 

And that wasn’t even getting into the _aggressions_. 

When she finally did finish, Armin stepped back from her drawing and sighed. 

It was awful. She felt like she’d regressed back to the point she’d started at during the first studio period. Everything looked wrong. The person in her drawing looked nothing like her. She’d exaggerated every feature, and in placing importance on features she didn’t like, she drew them even more toward the masculine than they really were. She’d squared off her jaw, thinned her lips to the point that they were nearly non-existent, made her chest appear almost concave, and drawn her hands almost comically large. Her legs looked like sticks, her knees like awkward growths, and her chin protruded more than any chin she’d ever seen. She didn’t even recognise the person she had drawn. 

She curled her fingers into her fringe and rested her palm against her forehead, eyes shutting tight. “Shit.”

“Hey,” Eren said, coming up behind her. “What’s wrong?”

Armin gestured vaguely at her drawing. 

Eren observed it quietly for a minute. “You thought too much,” he concluded. “Sometimes you have to turn your brain off when you draw, you know?”

“I can’t.” Armin sounded pained. “Everything looks wrong.”

“You’re getting better, though. Your drawing has improved so much since you started.”

“It’s not the drawing that’s the problem!” Armin shouted. “It’s me. I’m the problem. I look wrong.”

Eren put his hands on Armin’s shoulders. “Look at me.” He waited for her eyes to meet his. “You are _not_ a _problem_.”

“You say that, but it doesn’t change anything.” 

Eren could feel the anger rising; anger at what, he didn’t know for sure. It was directed at whatever had hurt Armin like this, and made her believe that she was anything but wonderful, and as he didn’t know what that was, it was aimless. The best he could do was not direct it at Armin herself. “Who the hell told you anything about you was a problem?”

Armin let out a short huff of a laugh, a fake one that only drove the knife in deeper to Eren’s heart because, once again, he couldn’t protect her. “Oh, everyone. From the day I was born. Hell, probably before that. You think I don’t know what’s wrong with me?” She stepped back, out of the reach of his hands. “I mean, look at me! I’m not a girl -- who in their right mind would ever believe that?”

“Me.”

“Besides you.” Before Eren could answer again, Armin started to shout. “No-one! Not a single damn person would look at me and see me for who I am. Not even you could figure it out on your own. And I hate it! And I can see every single reason why they can tell.”

“Are you a girl or not?” He worried she’d take the question wrong, that she wouldn’t let him finish, because for once Eren actually knew what he was saying. 

“What? I am!”

“Then fuck what anyone else thinks. Fuck what people who don’t know you think, and fuck what I think, too.” Eren stepped toward her again and replaced his hands on her shoulders. “You know who you are; that’s all that matters.”

“I can’t. I mean, I know I’m a girl. But it’s hard to say ‘fuck what everyone else thinks’ when-- when it’s _everyone_. Unless it’s dark, anyone who meets me for the first time think’s I’m a guy. My family realised I was growing up pretty rather than handsome and they were _worried_. I got bullied because our high school thought I was gay; imagine if they knew the truth. They would’ve been merciless. You, Mikasa, our friends, my professors; they can say I’m a girl, they can say they believe me, but it doesn’t change how most of the world sees me. And it hurts. So when I draw myself like that --” she nodded towards her drawing “-- it’s because all I see when I look at myself is everything that gives me away.”

“Do you want to know what I see?”

“You can tell me, but I doubt it’ll help.”

Eren considered choosing his words wisely, but fuck it; he wanted to be honest with her. Genuine. That would only happen if he let whatever was on his mind spew forth unedited. It was what he was best at. 

“I see my best friend. I see the girl I grew up with, who I’ve known longer than my sister, and guess what? I thought you were a girl when I first met you. I see one of the most important people in my life. I don’t see you in parts; I see all of you, inside and out; or at least I try my best to know you well enough for that.

“I don’t know what it’s like to be transgender. I’ve never had that experience. And I know I can’t just make everything better by telling you what I see when I look at you, and I can’t make it better by loving you either. You have to believe it yourself; you have to see yourself that way. 

“But… I see you hurting, and I don’t know what else I can do. I’ll do anything, _anything_ , to make you happy.” 

Armin shook in Eren’s hands, and he pulled her into a hug, rubbing her back slowly. She continued to shake, and Eren suspected she was crying, or else holding it back. “Why?” she asked. 

“Because you’re my best friend.” Did he need another reason? 

“But… that’s not all. You have other feelings for me, romantic ones, but you didn’t until after you found out I was a girl.”

That shocked Eren. Did Armin really think that? And was that thought so damaging to her that it made her feel like this? No, there had to be more to it -- but she was _wrong_. “That’s not true. I noticed after you told me, yeah, but I --”

“And I still have a dick, Eren. I’m not getting rid of it; it’s the only male part of my body that I like.”

“Okay.” Eren didn’t see where this was going. He liked cock; sure, the idea was a little new to him, but… Armin had seen his reaction to Levi’s nude form, and even to her own. Why did she think Eren would react any differently?

“If you’re going to fuck me, you can’t do it if you see me as a guy. I won’t let you.”

“I don’t see you as a guy.”

Armin pushed away from Eren again, and gestured at herself. “How can you even say that when I look like this?”

“Are you asking me to prove it to you?” Eren asked. “Because I can’t.”

“I just want to believe it.”

“I can’t force you to believe me. All I can do is be someone you can trust, but ultimately you decide what you believe.”

Armin looked back at her drawing. It was ugly; it was wrong; it was all of her insecurities at once. She believed she was a girl, but she knew that belief didn’t go as deep as it should. 

But then again… she didn’t actually look like that. Strangers saw her as a man, and it was awful. But friends saw her as a woman, or were trying to. Maybe she was the only one who saw herself as not enough of a woman. 

“I wish I could date you,” Armin said, trying to move to a lighter topic. It wasn’t much lighter though. 

“Me too,” he replied, because he did. Eren recognised she was avoiding what they’d just talked about, but he didn’t press her on it. This was a change that would take her time to accept; one didn’t simply stop rejecting one’s own perceived imperfections in a moment. It took work. 

“I just don’t want to compare myself to him, you know? To Levi. I feel like if you were just dating one of us, I’d only ever think about what makes him better than me -- even if I was the one with you.” 

“What would you have me do? Date you both?” He’d already said he’d never cheat on her, and he meant it. Armin was too important to him. 

“Well, that’s one idea.”

Wait, what? “Wait… what?”

“Don’t think of it as cheating. I think, in this case, it’s actually more honest. As long as we know, and it’s something we all want.” Armin’s eyes flicked to his, and then away; she couldn’t hold his gaze while he stared at her, so stunned like that. “You don’t have to. It’s just an idea.”

Eren was shocked. The idea didn’t totally sit well with him, because he was used to thinking of “dating two people” as equivalent to two-timing and therefore Not Okay. But the way Armin said it, she made it seem like the right thing to do. “I’ll… have to think about it.”

Armin looked hopeful, maybe even happy, and if just saying he’d consider it was enough to make her look like that, it was almost enough to convince him right on the spot. He meant it when he said he’d do anything to make her happy. 

“Let’s talk about it when you’re feeling a little better, okay?”

Armin nodded. “Are you going to draw yourself now?”

“Yeah, if you’re done. Mikasa’s going to work on hers somewhere else, so she’s not coming.”

“Great timing.”

“Yeah.” Eren didn’t mention that it was past ten o’clock, or that Armin had been stressing over her drawing and herself for more than three hours. He didn’t mind giving her time and space to work out her issues. 

He also knew, from years of friendship, when to give her attention, and Eren decided that even if Armin wanted to try and be a Big Girl and sleep alone that night, they could both use some cuddling time, and he would beg for it if he had to. Making a fool of himself was totally worth it if he could make his friends happy. 

“You’re still going to try and talk to Levi tomorrow, right?” Armin asked. She was sitting on the model stand with her arms wrapped around her legs, and she rested her cheek against her knees; Eren’s mental reaction of “ _adorable!_ ” was more of a reflex than a conscious thought. 

“I was planning to.”

“Okay. Good luck. I hope you work things out.” She shifted a little so she could look directly at Eren. “I mean that, by the way. I really do hope you work it out.”

“Thanks. I hope we do too.”

\---

Eren left lunch early the next day and arrived in the studio before Levi’s classroom had yet been unlocked. He got his paper out and set up his space, and when he heard the tell-tale sound of boots striking the concrete hallway, he went to the door. Leaning over the garbage can, he sharpened his pencils with a snap-off X-acto knife, and he heard Levi’s footsteps stutter. He looked up and over his shoulder; Levi had started walking again, this time right towards Eren. 

“Hey.” Levi’s voice was scratchy, and thick with lack of sleep; the usually faint circles under his eyes were deep and pronounced, more like bruises than shadows. Of course it didn’t take away from his natural beauty, but it concerned Eren. He’d taken one more day off a week, but it didn’t seem to be enough time, and now Levi was cutting into his sleeping hours. Eren didn’t believe he ever got much sleep normally, either. 

“Hi. Are you going to talk to me today?” Eren tried not to sound too accusatory. He didn’t exactly blame Levi for avoiding him after they’d fought; it was annoying, but understandable. Even adults -- real adults, not just barely-legal college students -- didn’t have it all together all the time. 

Levi’s eyes narrowed a little. “Not now; I have a class. Come to my office hours and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Okay. See you.”

Levi nodded once, then turned on his heel and unlocked the doors to the Painting studio. He left them open during his class, and Eren took that as a good sign. 

He finished up his work faster than usual; it looked a little rushed, but he was excited. Besides, he was allowed to have a few imperfect homework assignments, right? Professor Berner would understand. By the time Levi’s class let out, Eren had already cleaned up his space and packed his materials into his backpack. He waited until all the students left, then met Levi as he was locking up. 

“Afternoon, Professor.”

Levi hummed in response, a little gruffly, then led the way to his office. He unlocked the door, but shut it once they were both inside. “What do you want to talk about? And keep your voice down; my students bother the other professors enough as it is.”

“It’s, uh… It’s clean in here,” Eren observed. _Clean_ wasn’t really the word he wanted to use -- spotless, gleaming, perhaps sterile were all more fitting. 

“Very observant of you. Out with it; I know you’re not here to admire my cleaning.”

Eren looked at him directly for the first time since he’d entered this office. Levi had his arms crossed, and glared like he was trying to look intimidating, but his shoulders were pushed forward and he had his head tucked down, so he looked up at Eren rather than directly at him, so it was clear he was uncomfortable. 

“I’m sorry,” Eren said. “For what happened two weeks ago. I shouldn’t have provoked you like that.”

“You didn’t provoke me. You were being an ass, and I’ll accept your apology for that, but my reaction was my own fault.” That was as close to an apology as Levi was willing to give, but Eren accepted it. 

“And I’m sorry for ruining your pants.”

Levi shrugged. “I tripped you. And it’s not like I’m broke; I can buy more pants.” He shifted between his feet. “Anything else? Or did you just want to apologise?”

“Well…” Should he ask? Eren didn’t want to push Levi, but he did want to know. “Have you thought about, you know…” He gestured vaguely between the two of them. “I mean, no pressure or anything. I just was wondering.”

“I have.” Maybe more than he wanted to, but less than before. Levi’s thoughts were still interrupted every so often with smiling lips and bright eyes and warm hands, so he couldn’t exactly get away from the lingering “what if?” of a relationship. He wanted it, so much; more than he was willing to admit, but then again he had in fact admitted almost all of it, mostly against his will, and Hanji and Petra were observant enough to figure out the rest. “Why are you asking?”

“Well, I’m…” He wasn’t sure how thick the walls were, or how willing Levi was to let the other professors overhear, and he was pretty sure both answers were _not very much_. “It’s kind of complicated.”

“Oh? Try me.”

“Okay.” Eren wanted to take that as permission, but something about having this conversation where anyone might hear them unsettled him. He didn’t have any problem with a relationship with a professor, but he knew not everyone would feel the same. “Armin had an idea,” he attempted, hoping Levi might give him a more concrete response of permission. 

“By _complicated_ , do you actually mean private?” 

“Yeah, kind of.”

“I have to paint this afternoon.” Levi scratched his cheek; he could feel a faint stubble start to make itself known, rough where he hadn’t moisturised his skin enough. “You can… come and watch if you want.” It seemed like a bad idea, considering what had happened last time Eren came to his apartment. Then again, they couldn’t very well have this conversation in Levi’s office. 

“Are you sure your model won’t mind?”

“I’m working from photos; they won’t be there. Don’t take that as an invitation to do what you did last time.”

Eren threw up his hands, like he was about to beg for a surrender. “I wasn’t going to!”

“Hmm.” Levi wasn’t sure if he believed him, but they needed to have this conversation. He may also be losing hold of the reins of his self-control. “Can you come back in an hour?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll go get a smoothie.”

“Could you get me something, too?” Eren nodded, and Levi fished a five-dollar-bill out of his pocket and slid it across the desk. “Small hot chocolate.”

“Sure thing.” Eren’s lips twitched a little, like he was going to laugh or make some bratty remark about how _cute_ it was that Levi wanted hot chocolate. He didn’t, though, and he reached for the five; Levi had covered almost the whole thing with his own hand, so their fingers brushed together when Eren tried to slide it out. Eren covered Levi’s hand completely with his own, circled his fingers around Levi’s wrist, and when Levi’s arm went stiff he _did_ laugh, but then the warmth of his palm was gone along with Levi’s bill. “See you soon, Levi.”

Levi watched Eren’s retreating back until the office door opened and shut behind him, and then he dropped his head down hard on his desk with a loud thunk. His face heated up, because he let himself show an emotion every once in a while when he was alone, and _shit_ , he was embarrassed that Eren could take control of him with a simple touch like that. His wrist still tingled where Eren had taken hold of him, and oh, what he wouldn’t give for Eren to hold him down and fuck him. 

This was decidedly _not_ the right train of thought to be boarding an hour before he’d have Eren alone in his home, so he stood up and tried his best to get some grading done. He was behind on the most recent set of two-week evaluations, since he’d been trying to squeeze grading into any free time he had during office hours. 

Eren returned with five minutes left in the hour, a steaming cup of hot chocolate cradled in his hands. He dropped $2.50 on Levi’s desk next to the cup, and Levi raised an eyebrow at him. “Keep it. I meant for you to use that on yourself.”

Eren snorted. “I have my own money, you know.” 

Levi stared him down, while Eren stammered out excuses, until the student gave in and took the money. “Thanks…” Eren pocketed the change, then hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder. 

“Let’s go. No-one else is coming.” Levi shrugged on his coat -- it was dark green, and more of a long, thick cape than an actual coat, and it was the only piece of clothing he regularly wore that wasn’t white. 

Eren chuckled a little, and Levi looked at him with a request for explanation in his eye as he buttoned the double-breasted front of the cape. “Oh,” Eren said, a little nervously. “It’s just, usually only the girls here wear capes. I’ve never seen a guy do it, except for the LARPers and you.”

Levi continued to glare at him and flipped up his hood with an angry flick of his hands; Eren broke out into full-on laughter. Levi hoped he hadn’t accidentally done something fucking _cute_ again. 

“Maybe I am a LARPer,” Levi suggested. He wasn’t, but Hanji had been, and he knew how some of the more stuck-up Wall students liked to make fun of roleplayers, to put it lightly, so he was a little defensive. 

Eren squinted at him for a moment, then shook his head. “I can see it. You probably play a witch, or a vampire.” He tripped over a box that had been left out in the middle of the hallway; Eren managed to right himself before he fell on his face, but not before he flailed his arms out for a few seconds and dropped his backpack. 

“You’d make a good giant. You’re clumsy enough.”

Eren pointed at Levi accusingly, and opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but his lips pulled into a smile and he seemed to think better of it. He shook his head. 

“If you were going to say something about the size of your dick, thank you for sparing me.” Levi smirked, only lifting the corner of his mouth that Eren couldn’t see, and just for a moment. 

Eren nudged his arm playfully. “Hey, I’ve seen yours.”

“You’ve seen my flaccid penis while I modelled for your class. Congratulations.” Levi held the door open for Eren, and they stepped out into the cold together. No-one else was around; with the weather this cold, everyone was either in class or home. Eren shivered. “You’re going to get sick if you keep coming out in just a sweatshirt.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sure you are.” Just to fuck with Eren, Levi took a long drag of his hot chocolate, and hummed in approval. “So warm.”

“Dick.” Eren elbowed Levi again. “This is nice, you know?” 

“Hm?”

“Being able to joke with you and stuff.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets, but it wasn’t indicative of nervousness, like it would be for Levi; for Eren, it just meant his fingers were cold. “I guess I like seeing you more comfortable around me, you know? Gives me hope, or something.” 

“Joking about dicks and how you never dress for the weather gives you hope?” 

“Well, yeah. It’s kind of…”

 _Don’t say domestic_ , Levi thought. 

“Normal? I don’t know. Makes me think you’re getting less concerned with you being a professor and me being a student and all that.”

“I guess I am.” Levi paused, thinking Eren would have something to say, but he didn’t so Levi filled the silence instead. “It’s not so much that I’m a professor, specifically; we’re in very different places in our lives.”

“Do you think you’ll bore me?”

“That’s not it.”

“Good, ‘cause you won’t. Don’t worry about it.” Eren smiled and nudged him a third time; Levi wondered if he was going to get a bruise. “We would be in different places in our lives even if we were the same age. I don’t know a ton about how you grew up, but I know it wasn’t much like my life has been.”

“I guess not. Still.”

“Are you worried you’re going to have too much power over me or something?” Eren turned around and started to walk backwards so that he could face Levi. “Because, again, you won’t. Hell, half the time I feel like I’m the one who has too much power over you.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong; Eren did have a lot of control over Levi, more than he was entirely comfortable with. Then again, Levi did like being thrown out of his comfort zone every once in a while, and Eren could make him lose control in some of the most enjoyable ways possible. Case in point: Eren reached out and brushed his fingers against the back of Levi’s hand where it gripped his cup, and Levi swore he felt a supernova erupt under his skin. “I should have more control over myself than this.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I shouldn’t be falling for a student.”

“If you keep thinking of me as a student and not a person, you’re always going to feel like you’re doing something wrong.” 

Eren had a point, but that didn’t mean he was right. This wasn’t ethical. Levi wouldn’t exactly say he had the strongest sense of ethics, but this did rub him the wrong way. 

“I can make my own decisions, you know, and so can you.” After narrowly missing a fire hydrant, Eren turned back around, falling into step next to Levi once again. “You decided to go after me, and I think you did it with a clear head; you wouldn’t have even noticed me if I hadn’t been so into you in the first place, yeah?”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Levi.” Eren stopped, and he grabbed Levi’s shoulder with stiff fingers to make Levi face him. “Do you want me?” he whispered. “Be honest. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

It made Levi feel sort of ridiculous that Eren was the one saying that to him; he felt like, as Eren’s superior, he should be the one reassuring Eren at every turn the importance of consent in their hypothetical relationship. “I do.”

“Why?”

“Honestly?” Levi asked. Eren nodded. “Because you gave me attention, and your eyes light up like tiny suns when you smile.” There were more reasons, obviously, but that was why he’d first felt the pull. Everything else came later. 

Eren grinned, and as if the universe had suddenly decided it wanted to be poetic, the sun peeked out from behind the clouds for the first time in days. Or maybe it was just that Eren’s moods could control the weather. “That’s a good enough reason, don’t you think?” 

“Maybe. Come on, you still need to tell me what Armin’s idea was.” Levi turned away, walking quickly; he wanted a moment to release the tiny smile he’d been holding in before Eren caught up with him. 

Levi led Eren to his house and let him in. “Do you want something to drink?”

“I’m good.” 

“Shoes off. I’m going to go change; I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“Do you want any help?” Eren asked, faking innocence. Levi glared at him. 

Eren walked around the front room while Levi was changing. He hadn’t gotten the chance to take a good look at all the paintings the last time he was here. Some of them had pieces of paper taped above them; upon closer inspection, they resembled museum plaques, with titles and a list of materials, as well as a short paragraph of a description. Each title was a person’s name, and Eren assumed they were the names of the models; he saw that Levi’s self-portrait was, in fact, titled “Levi”, and decided he was right. The giant blue penis also had a plaque, and Eren wondered who “Erwin” was. 

“I didn’t sleep with him, if you’re wondering.” 

Eren jumped to the side, making a very undignified squeaking noise. Levi had snuck up behind him, nearly silent in socked feet. “D-do you usually sleep with your models?”

“Not _usually_ , but sometimes I do, if they want to. Not him, though; he likes his men tall, and I like my men short enough that I don’t have to stand on their feet to fuck standing up.”

“I’ll make sure I don’t get any taller, then.” Eren stood on his toes, then, and looked down at Levi with a smirk. 

Levi wasn’t nearly as amused as Eren. “I’m not self-conscious about my height, but if you make fun of me, it will not end well for you.” When Eren only grinned wider, Levi aimed an elbow at his stomach. He telegraphed the move, and Eren backed off before the hit could connect. 

“Okay, okay. Sorry. So are you going to paint so we can talk?”

“Yeah, just let me set up.” He took the sheet off of the huge canvas propped up against his oversized easel. “By the way, before you look -- this isn’t a woman.”

Eren looked. The painting was still in the blobs stage, but there were photo printouts attached to the edges of the canvas with artists’ tape, and even though the person’s more private areas were in shadow and they were otherwise androgynous, Eren could see enough that he understood the warning. “So… trans man?”

“Non-binary, I think is what they’re going with. Not really either.”

“Huh. Okay.” He watched over Levi’s shoulder as he picked up the brush and palette and got to work. “Is this acrylic?”

“Unfortunately. I need to work fast, and I need it to dry fast.”

“Do you not like acrylic paint?”

“I hate it.” Levi held in his rant against acrylics for once. “But I don’t have much of a choice. I have a show coming up, they asked me last-minute, and I don’t have enough of the work they asked for.” He could tell Eren was stalling. He switched out his brush for a palette knife and tried to look a little more impatient while he mixed colours. “You wanted to talk?”

“Yeah. I was talking with Armin last night. She’s pretty wound up about… certain things, I don’t know if she wants me to tell anyone about it. But she told me she doesn’t want to be with me if she has to compete with you.”

“So you broke up over that?” Levi couldn’t believe it, especially not of those two. They seemed joined at the hip; how could Armin even think of Levi as competition? 

“Not… exactly. I mean, we did, but the thing is, if it wasn’t a competition, it’d be fine.”

“What are you getting at?” Levi didn’t like being talked in circles. 

“She’d rather I date her… and you.”

Levi turned his head so fast he heard his neck crack. 

“You don’t have to say yes!” Eren said it all as if it were one word, and Levi almost didn’t understand him. “I told you, I wouldn’t do anything you don’t want. I was just suggesting it, in case you, you know, wanted to.” 

Levi gaped a little, his jaw twitching as he tried to decide how to respond. He expected he would have to ask Eren about this himself, not that Eren would bring the idea to him. “I’d be fine with that.”

“Really?!” Eren smiled, and how could Levi ever say no when the student was practically luminous with happiness?

“Sure. Not yet, but if it comes to that, then yes. That would be… great, actually. I might feel less like I’m taking you away from a normal life.”

“My life’s not exactly normal as it is.” Eren leaned down and planted a kiss on Levi’s cheek, then half-skipped toward the door. “I should get going; I don’t want to disturb you any more. Get some sleep, Levi.”

Levi turned, a little stunned from the kiss and Eren’s lingering grin. “Yeah. See you.”

“See ya!” Eren was out the door in moments. 

Levi turned back to his painting, but he just sat there for a minute or so, not sure if he was yet ready to let the moment go. Eventually, he fished his phone out of his pocket and sent off a text to Hanji and Petra. 

_i think i just agreed to a hypothetical polyamorous relationship with a student. now all i have to do is say fuck it to my ethical concerns._

Within minutes they both sent back responses, but Levi had already shut off his phone, preferring to ignore them for the time being and ride the high he still felt. 

Eren called Armin as soon as he was out of Levi’s apartment building. Armin picked up on the second ring. “ _How did it go?_ ”

“He said yes!”

“ _That’s great!_ ”

“Well, he said yes, hypothetically. As in, if he ever does date me, he’d be fine with it. So we’re still not there yet. But it’s a possibility!” Eren could still feel the drag of Levi’s light stubble from where he’d kissed him; possibility tickled. 

“ _I’m happy for you, Eren. Now, get back here. I want to kiss you._ ”

“On my way.” Eren broke into a run, dodging the early participants in the Thursday dinner rush as he headed the opposite direction to them. “And, Armin?”

“ _Yeah?_ ”

“I love you.”

There were a few moments of silence on the other end, and Eren wondered if the call had dropped; it wasn’t unusual to suddenly lose service around here. But then Armin’s voice came through, soaked with emotion. “ _You mean that in a different way than usual, don’t you?_ ”

“Yeah. I realised it last night, but it didn’t feel like the right time to say it.” He vaulted over a small dog on a leash, then realised he should probably hang up. “I’ll be there in a few. Bye.”

“ _I love you, too. Bye, Eren._ ”

\---

“Does anyone have a blue skirt and face paint in primary colours?!”

Eren opened with this as he slammed his hands down onto the dinner table. Armin was nowhere to be found, and that made Mikasa a little concerned. “I have face paint,” she replied. “Where’s Armin?”

“In our room, putting a costume together. Does anyone have a blue skirt? Not denim.”

“I have one,” Sasha offered. “It’s pleated, is that okay?”

“Perfect. Can you bring it over tonight? After rehearsal is fine.” 

Sasha nodded. Eren took a step away from the table, then remembered something. “Actually, do you have any red hair dye?”

“Red? Yeah, I should. You need that too?”

Eren nodded and thanked her, then left the table to get dinner. He piled enough on one plate for both himself and Armin and dashed off back to his room. 

Late that night, when Mikasa and Sasha dropped off their things, Armin came to the door. She wasn’t wearing anything spectacular, but Eren was sewing on his bed and there were scraps of fabric all over the floor. “You two really left your Drag Ball prep for the last minute, didn’t you?”

“Shush. We’re going to be amazing.” Armin took what they handed her. “Thank you guys so much!” She kicked the door shut, leaving Sasha and Mikasa to look quizzically at each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is “[Unconditional Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FBxnAP7Ox8)” by Against Me!


	18. Stardust and Mercury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abs. Also, Drag Ball.

Armin’s hair, freshly dyed a bright red-orange, had become distractingly noticeable; she tied it up in a short ponytail to keep it out of her eyesight during the Anatomy studio. Over her shoulder in the mirror, she saw Eren smirk and get up off his bed. “What?” Armin asked, before Eren put his hands on her waist and leaned up against her back. He tucked his head into her shoulder and kissed her exposed neck. “Eren!” Armin said, scolding; Eren backed off but smiled no less. 

“I thought you said I’m allowed now.” He tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear. 

“You are. But that tickles.”

“Does it?” Eren’s smile turned into a full grin, and the hand left on Armin’s waist squeezed. His other hand went to her neck, fingertips dancing across the skin, and Armin curled in on herself, giggling uncontrollably. 

Armin shoved her hands back against Eren’s stomach and tickled him back; he let out a shout and instantly fell on the ground. He was curled up on his side, still laughing even though Armin was no longer touching him. 

“Don’t deal it out if you can’t take it,” Armin chided. “Come, on, we’re going to be late for class.” She put on her coat, hauled her backpack onto her shoulder, and sighed as she picked up the shipping tube that contained her homework assignment. She hadn’t re-done it; it was still the self-portrait she’d drawn on Wednesday night. There wasn’t much of a point in doing it over. When she looked in the mirror for too long, she still saw all those parts of her that looked wrong. A second try probably wouldn’t improve it. She’d been through critique recently, so as long as she wasn’t late again she just had to suffer through a few minutes of homework check with Professor Shadis explaining to her that she had to draw what she saw and not think about it too much in five different ways. 

She didn’t want to hang it up, though. She didn’t want anyone to see it. So Armin picked a shadowy spot on the tack-board next to an empty display case, which was the most out-of-the-way spot left on the wall when she and Eren got to class. 

However, she realised too late that she’d picked a place next to the only two students in the class who hadn’t yet done homework critique. Her face burned and she stammered out responses to the questions Shadis posed to the class about the drawings, knowing, or at least believing, that every so often their eyes would stray to her own piece and they’d judge her, they’d see all the flaws and then see them in her, see her the way she saw herself. Maybe it wasn’t true; maybe it was a pointless worry. But that didn’t make it any easier to ignore. 

The models for the day were three students Armin didn’t recognise, and she set up her drawing area while the first undressed in the corner and Shadis explained in his usual shout what their objectives were for the day. Their agenda for the next week was to learn about abdominal muscles, and as such that was what they were to pay attention to during this studio session while still drawing the whole figure. 

The three models were all of slightly different builds, but all had at least somewhat defined abs. Armin couldn’t exactly say she minded drawing them. She loved Eren dearly, but she also liked a little muscle as much as the next girl and he was a bit… well, soft. Then again, his slightly squishy stomach was probably more comfortable to sleep on than rock-hard abs. Mikasa was a good comparison; Armin had tried sleeping on her once over winter break and found her mostly uncomfortable. 

Uncomfortable. That was a familiar word. Familiar from that morning, in fact. Armin had gotten up early, and though she was loath to leave Eren’s bed and his warm embrace, she wanted to try something. She’d only taken an extra ten minutes in the shower, and five of those had been hygiene-related; the other five had been spent in frustration. Though she’d known it would have been better had she been a little more prepared, Armin assumed she’d at least feel something sort of pleasurable from fingering her ass without lube; she’d been wrong. It wasn’t painful, but it was certainly uncomfortable, and she couldn’t get a good angle in the cramped shower stall, so she gave up fast. 

She only hoped it would be better if Eren ever did it to her, and did it properly; at the rate they were moving, he probably would. 

Armin felt her face flush again, and tried to put her attention back on drawing; Shadis broke through her concentration almost immediately by calling her over for her homework check. 

Professor Shadis stood with his left arm across his chest, supporting his right arm as his hand covered his mouth. He stared intently at her self-portrait, deep in thought. “Do you know what the problems are here?”

“Yes, sir.” She prepared to list them off; lord knew she had the list memorised by heart. 

“Good. Because this hasn’t happened with any of your other drawings, neither of Eren nor Mikasa. Even if you don’t hand in a perfect piece every time, I can tell you at least draw what you observe, but not here. You thought too much this time. It seems to be a personal issue that’s affecting this drawing.” Shadis rubbed his head a few times with the edge of his sleeve. “I don’t plan to assign another self-portrait, and I don’t expect you to do another for class. But if you have free time, you might want to try doing a few of them for yourself. It could help a lot.”

Armin wondered how many times Shadis had given the same advice to other students with some sort of body image issues. She also wondered how many times it had worked. “I’ll try, I guess.” 

“Good. Go sit down.”

It wasn’t until after class, when she, Eren, and Mikasa walked back to their dorm together, that Armin’s mind wandered again, right back into the space she’d started to encroach upon earlier; her previous night -- and day -- with Eren. 

After their conversation Wednesday night, Eren had certainly thought about Armin’s proposal; thought about it so much, in fact, that he stopped Armin on her way out the door for class and told her in no uncertain terms that he did very much want to date both Armin and Levi, if they were both willing to have him that way. He also said he planned to ask Levi about it that afternoon, if at all possible, and he’d followed through with it. 

Let it never be said that Eren Jager did anything halfway. 

When Eren called her, half breathless, to tell her Levi had agreed to at least the idea of Eren having two partners, Armin had nearly jumped for joy. She could be with Eren and feel right about it. He wouldn’t feel like he had to make a choice, and she wouldn’t second-guess herself in a comparison with Levi. Even if Levi wasn’t ready to take that final step and actually become Eren’s boyfriend yet, the simple fact that he was okay with Eren being with someone else as well was enough to make Armin take that step, and as soon as Eren opened the door to their room she’d jumped on him and kissed him for all it was worth, like she’d been starved and dehydrated for years and the only taste of water she could get was from Eren’s mouth. 

Eren had kicked the door shut behind him and half-carried her to his bed, ditching his backpack along the way, and he’d set her down gently before doffing his sweatshirt and diving in for another kiss. They’d ended up pressed up against each other like on their snow day, kissing and rocking together with their jeans around their ankles, not yet daring to go the extra mile and take off the last layer between them but definitely ready to let little whines pass into the other’s mouth until warm, wet stickiness soaked through their underwear and onto their thighs. 

If they leaned their heads together and whispered to each other about whether it was worth it to change the clothes they’d made a mess of to go to dinner, no-one was the wiser. They decided it was worth it when Eren’s stomach rumbled, and Armin broke out the air freshener, hoping it would mask the smell of their recent activities. Eren giggled, a little breathlessly, while Armin sprayed Febreze all over the room and the both of them, and she smiled conspiratorially, kissing him one last time and linking their hands together before they let go and headed down to dinner. 

Mikasa figured them both out in a heartbeat, or maybe she’d already known from her scarily accurate empathic superpowers while it was happening; either way, she raised an eyebrow at the pair of them when they sat down at the table, and Armin smiled sheepishly while Eren blushed and looked away. Mikasa then put her hands together and bowed her head a little, showing she gave them her blessing. As if they didn’t already know she approved. 

“I guess you made your choice,” Mikasa whispered to Eren. She was a little disappointed, but she didn’t let him see it; she’d hoped that Eren would realise he could benefit from polyamory. 

“Not really,” Eren responded, and his cryptic response was enough; Mikasa smiled. He _had_ realised it. 

Or maybe… She leaned forward and looked around him at Armin, who shrugged and smiled. Ah. Of course Armin was the one who came up with the idea. 

But if that was the case, was Eren dating Levi as well? Already? Last Mikasa had heard, Levi was still a long ways away from really accepting whatever feelings he had for Eren. Seeing her confusion, Armin told her they’d talk later. 

Armin felt bad, as she paid attention once again to the present; she still hadn’t really talked with Mikasa. “Um, Mikasa?”

“Yeah?”

“I said we would talk.” Armin was a little nervous, to be honest. She knew Mikasa wouldn’t be jealous (it wasn’t as if she wanted this sort of relationship) but Armin didn’t want her to feel left out because Eren and Armin had something in their relationship that they didn’t share with her. 

Then again, Mikasa was Eren’s sister, and while Armin couldn’t really put a name to the way Mikasa protected her, she knew it was something different from the way she did with Eren. Maybe they weren’t leaving her out at all. 

“You two are dating, right?” Mikasa asked, nonchalantly. 

“Yeah,” Armin replied. Eren smiled and put his arm around her. 

“And Levi…?” Mikasa trailed off, allowing them to fill in the blank. 

Eren shook his head. “I’m not dating him, but Armin said I could do both if I wanted. I asked Levi and he liked the idea, but he’s not really… ready, you know? So, maybe eventually.”

“I’m glad he’s taking the time to work it out rationally.” Mikasa looked over her two best friends. “I don’t have to threaten either of you; I know you wouldn’t dare hurt each other, and if you did, you’d beat yourselves up about it more than I ever could. But let me know as soon as Levi is ‘ready’, because I still have to give him the talk.”

“Please don’t kill him.” Eren winced. 

\---

Levi had been very particular about the acrylic paint he’d bought, even more so than he usually was with his oils. He wanted high quality, something that wouldn’t smell like burnt rubber and feel like plastic, or at least would do so as little as possible. He also wanted the longest drying time possible, so he still had a chance to re-work it on the canvas; that amounted to three-to-five hours. 

He’d realised upon starting to work with the paint that getting the level of detail he wanted out of wet acrylic on top of more wet acrylic was not a possibility. The paint didn’t cut like clay or stick like glue; instead, globs were heavy on the page and dragged down, so he painted thin, and then details dripped and slid down the smooth surface of the shiny, still-wet paint. He tried cutting in grooves where he wanted detail with a small, blunt knife or the eye of a needle, careful not to cut the canvas, but he found cracks appearing when the new layer of detail dried unevenly against the old, cut layer beneath.

The most luck Levi had found was putting down the paint, cutting in shallow grooves, waiting for it to dry completely, and then laying in the details; he wished he’d figured it out sooner, and not wasted time and paint fucking up over and over. Acrylic paint was a pain in the ass, he decided, but he just didn’t have the time for oil. Even wasting a week learning new techniques was preferable; had he used oils, he would have had to be done with all his work _that day_ if he had any hope of the paintings drying by the time of his show. 

As it was, he had just marked in grooves on fresh paint for the next layer of detail, and had at least three hours to kill before he could do anything more. Had he found a second model already, this wouldn’t be a problem; he would just switch paintings. However, he’d procrastinated, and he was paying for it in lost time. 

Usually he would fill the spaces of time with cleaning or his classes or trips to the grocery store or sleep, but his apartment was spotless, his fridge was freshly stocked, and it was seven at night on a Friday. Maybe, for once, he could have some fun. 

Levi called Hanji; they were staying late at the lab for a study of some sort that required constant surveillance. He called Erwin; he’d just gotten a call about an emergency with one of his clients, and was about to leave and deal with that. He called Petra; she was a plus-one for a student at Wall, attending their famous Drag Ball. 

She invited him anyway. “You can still join us, if you want; you’re a professor, you can get in. It’ll be fun!”

It _would_ be fun; it always had been, when Levi had gone back in his own days at Wall. He’d always gone in full drag; wig, corset, heels, skirt, and honestly offensive amounts of makeup. “Wouldn’t it be a little strange for a professor to go to a student party?”

“That’s why you wear a disguise. Do drag. Come on, I’d love to see you in a skirt.”

Levi sighed. He wondered if he still fit into the dress he’d worn to his last Drag Ball, in Hanji’s senior year -- but of course he did. He certainly hadn’t grown since. “When does it start?”

“Eight. I’ll walk you down there!”

He went to his spare closet and shuffled through the old clothes in there, all of the colourful (or at least not bleach-white) clothing he owned until he spotted reflective silver and soft black in a clear plastic garment bag. 

Levi put on his face while he waited for Petra; there was more hair gel involved than makeup, and with his hair slicked to his head like a second skin he thoroughly washed his hands and then smudged black over his eyelids. He stripped down and switched out his underwear for something a little more suitable for the occasion; he considered tucking, but between the discomfort and the ball sweat to come, and the fact that the dress’s skirt was puffy enough to hide his dick anyway, he decided against it, slipping on tight, black, somewhat-unisex underwear, and then sheer black tights. 

A knock on the door sent him parading across his apartment in just his underwear and makeup; Levi let Petra in, and she, in an oversized suit and tie and holding a decorative cane, looked him up and down. “I hope you’re not wearing that. They’ll recognise you in a second.”

“I need help with the corset.” Levi turned on his heel and Petra followed him to his room, shutting the front door behind her. Levi was hooking a bra on when she came into his room; it had padding already sewn into the cups. 

Petra helped him into the dress first, snickering as soon as she realised his inspiration; though it was shorter than the original dress, he was unmistakably imitating Annie Lennox, and pulling off the look better than she had. The corset was extra, and just as shiny as the top half of the dress itself; Petra tied him into it, pulling tight at the laces to give the impression of a bust and wide hips. 

“Can you dance in this?” she asked.

“More or less. Sitting down is a pain, though.” The front of the corset had a deep V at the bottom that reached past his stomach and almost into his crotch. “You meeting your date there?”

“Mm-hm. Well, date is a relative term. She’s my sister. Her name is Nifa.”

“I painted a Nifa once.”

“Might be the same one. It’s not that common of a name.” Petra supported Levi as he stepped into his obnoxiously high heels, and once he had them on, he was steadier than she’d ever been. “Great, now you’re a full head taller than me instead of just a few inches.” Petra resisted the urge to kick his heel; she’d probably snap the thin stiletto in half on impact. 

“I think my ears just popped,” Levi joked. “Do you know what the best part of me in drag is?”

“What?”

Levi’s lips curled up at the edges, and his usually expressionless face morphed into a bright smile. “A smile makes me unrecognisable.”

Petra’s eyes bugged out of her head a little as she took in the transformation before her. “It really does.”

It turned out that that while Levi was very well-coordinated while standing still or walking on flat ground, his shoes proved difficult on stairs. He leaned on the railing on one side and Petra on the other, grumbling all the way. The walk to the college, which was mostly uphill and on cracked sidewalks, wasn’t much better, nor was the flight of stairs down to the campus centre basement, where the Ball was being held. Levi would have been even more pissy about it, but he’d never seen a single person make it down stairs in heels that high without any trouble. And it wasn’t as if he had a lot of practice. 

Once back on solid ground, Levi regained control of his feet and plastered his smile back onto his face. Nifa waved at them from halfway across the room and came over to get Petra in. Levi waved his campus ID at one of the students checking people in and squeezed his way past the cluster of people forming nearby. 

Drag Ball was already well underway, the overhead lights turned low and strobes flaring in time with the music. “Dancing in the Dark” faded out and was replaced by generic electronic dance music with minimal vocals; some people danced, and others crowded together to admire each others’ choices of dress. Levi couldn’t quite shake the awkward feeling of being a professor at a student dance, but he followed the sisters to crowd together under the small disco ball and danced with them through what he assumed to be a few songs (he could barely tell them apart). 

Nifa matched with Petra; they both wore pinstriped gray suits, probably borrowed from men who were both taller and broader than them. They had the ends of their sleeves and pants turned up comically, and they each carried a cane that looked like they came from Halloween costume shops. Levi recognised Nifa as the woman with the Vulcan tattoo; her ears, as he remembered, were pointed, but her hair, though still messily layered by her own hand, was dyed a dark gray-blue rather than the vibrant red, like Petra’s, that it naturally was. 

He didn’t think it was the right time to mention that he slept with her, but he was pretty sure Nifa recognised him, especially when Petra introduced him, and he was just as sure that Petra already knew. 

Another flash of blue hair caught Levi’s eye; as soon as he turned to look, so did the hair’s owner. Eren stared back at him, squinting at first in confusion, but then breaking into a grin when he recognised Levi, even through the uncharacteristically expressive smile and the makeup. He had Armin wrapped up in his arms, and her head was tucked under his chin. She seemed to notice Eren break the rhythm of their dance, and she looked up, then followed Eren’s line of sight to Levi. She smiled brightly at him, and with her head turned fully in Levi’s direction he could see the red and blue lightning bolt painted onto the right side of her face. 

Armin waved Levi over, and he excused himself from Petra and Nifa and pushed his way through the crowd that started to close in on him. He might have dug his heel into a few toes by accident, and a few others with purpose, and as he neared the pair swaying slowly to a fast song off in their own little world, he noticed Armin’s hair colour had changed, too, to a vibrant red-orange, and while she was dressed casually aside from the flamboyant hair and bright face paint, in just black pants and a white button-down, Eren was more fully decked out, in a white T-shirt with a blue bow on the front, and a darker blue pleated skirt. He also had what appeared to be blue leggings, and heels that he wobbled in unsteadily. 

“David Bowie and Sailor Mercury?” Levi asked when he approached them. 

“Sailor _Freddie_ Mercury,” Eren corrected. “My moustache fell off.”

“And you’re Annie Lennox,” Armin said. 

“I kind of want to mess up your hair.” Eren grinned sheepishly, but he tightened his hold on Armin rather than reaching for Levi’s head. 

“Please don’t,” Levi warned. “You two seem happy.”

Eren looked down at Armin and smiled at her before looking back to Levi. “All thanks to you.”

“What did I do?”

“You said you’d be okay with me dating you both.”

Levi hadn’t realised it was such a big deal that he agreed to it. He started to respond, but the song changed and the sheer hilarity of coincidence stopped his tongue; Britney Spears blasted through the speakers in vehement support of threesomes. “Well, isn’t that great timing.” 

Levi looked over to the DJ, expecting some foul play; sure enough, Petra stood next to one of the speakers and waved at Levi. She must have moved even faster than him to get across the room so soon after he’d left her. Nifa stood next to her, giggling into her hand. Levi felt a little betrayed that Petra had apparently told her sister about his fucked-up love life, so he turned his back to them both. 

“So how are you doing?” Eren asked. He kept his left arm around Armin and the other outstretched toward Levi, like he wanted to touch him in some sort of friendly way but didn’t know if he would be crossing a line. 

“Fine. Waiting for paint to dry, or I wouldn’t be here.”

“Well, I’m glad you came. I haven’t been able to see much of you lately.” Aside from following Levi to his office hours, but that wasn’t much at all compared to the three hours a week they used to spend sharing each others’ space. 

“I was hoping to see you soon, too,” Armin said. 

That wasn’t what Levi was expecting to hear. He’d been on one end of a polyamorous relationship before, and the person on the other end had been sort of distrustful of him and avoided contact as much as possible; in Petra’s case, the only reason Oluo was close to Gunther and Erd was that they’d been friends since long before any semblance of a relationship had started. From what Levi knew, it wasn’t common for two people who were dating the same person to get close to each other. 

But Armin seemed honestly excited to see Levi, at least now that he was less of a perceived threat to her relationship with Eren and more so the glue holding them together. 

“Oh,” was all Levi could really come up with. “Well, I’m here now.”

“Yes you are. And we all match.”

Eren snorted a laugh; he brought up a hand to cover his mouth and leaned in to Armin, looking down at Levi with bright, wide eyes. 

“It was a last-second clothing choice,” Levi explained. “I didn’t even know I was coming until an hour ago.”

“You look good, regardless.” Armin looked him up and down again. “I think you pull it off better than her.”

“Are you speaking ill of Annie Lennox?” Levi narrowed his eyes, shooting Armin a dangerous look. “How dare you.”

Armin looked taken aback, and a little scared, but she relaxed when Levi softened his gaze back into his usual impassivity. “Oh. You were acting.”

“I do that. But you’re right; the Tribute Concert wasn’t her best look.” Levi picked at the end of his dress and shuffled his feet a little; was the room getting warm, or was he just feeling nervous again? His awkward small talk pointed more to the latter, though the slowly steaming windows of the campus center basement pointed to the former. 

“Actually, I’d kind of like to talk to you alone.” Armin smiled at Levi and reached out towards him, taking him by the wrist. “If that’s okay with you.”

Levi reminded himself that he was an adult, and could handle a student wanting to have a conversation with him. “Sure.” He followed Armin, who still had a loose grip on his wrist, out to a corner by the mailboxes. Levi looked back at Eren, who watched after the two of them with a content look on his face before disappearing further into the crowd. 

“Your pulse is racing,” Armin said. Levi yanked his hand out of hers. “Hey. There’s no reason to be nervous.” Her voice was calm, and meant to soothe, but Levi only tuned into the way Armin strained at the higher end of her vocal range, the way her voice teetered just at the edge of breaking, and when she pushed it like that he could hear every bit of how nervous she was herself to be talking to him one-on-one like this. 

“I’m not ready for this yet,” Levi blurted out. “If I ever do decide to throw out my reservations and fuck Eren then I’m fine with you fucking him as well, but I’m not there yet. So if you’re expecting me to sign on right away, you’ll be disappointed.”

“I know all that. I’m not going to rush you. I just want to make sure this is what you want.” Armin glanced back at the crowd; she couldn’t see Eren from where they were standing. “Eren can sometimes push people into doing things without meaning to. I want to make sure you’re comfortable with it.”

“Shouldn’t I be asking if you’re comfortable?” Levi asked. “I’m the one who’s ten years older than both of you. I’m the one who could take advantage of him.”

Armin shook her head. “You won’t, though. I can tell you care about him. So are you really okay with it?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Of course I am. I wouldn’t have suggested it to Eren if I wasn’t.”

“And you’re okay with _me_?” Levi asked. 

“What do you mean?”

Levi wasn’t really sure what he meant by that, in all honesty. He had gotten the feeling Armin didn’t like him very much, for whatever reason; he’d gotten the same feeling from Mikasa, and in all honesty he sort of hoped she wasn’t at this party. He wasn’t scared, exactly; more like he had the distinct feeling that Mikasa was some sort of slumbering dragon ready to wake and try to eat him, and while he was fairly certain he could take her in a fight, he’d rather not get to that point. But as for Armin… in a way, he _was_ afraid of her. Levi knew that Eren’s bond with Armin was unbreakable, and closer than Levi could ever hope to be. Eren wouldn’t deny her anything if he could help it and he knew it would make her happy; in that way, Levi was afraid she could suddenly decide she didn’t want Levi around, and that would be the end of it. He didn’t know her all that well, so he didn’t know if that was something she would really do. She could also be the type to suffer in silence, to despise him secretly and resent him for being in the way. That wasn’t any better. 

Armin broke through Levi’s tangled thoughts. “I don’t hate you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I guess I was a little frustrated that you got Eren’s attention, but mostly I was angry at myself for not doing anything about it. But if Eren got to know you better and he still likes you, then I guess you’re a pretty good person.” She fidgeted a little, twisting her fingers together. “I’d like to get to know you better, too, if you don’t mind. It doesn’t make sense for us to play at being strangers.”

“Yeah… sure.” Was it really a good idea? Levi wasn’t certain, but if it was what Armin wanted, and if it was what Eren wanted, then he could try. It was the least he could do. “I don’t know when that will happen, though. I’ve got a pretty full schedule when I’m not trying to avoid watching paint dry.”

Armin laughed at that. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out. Maybe I’ll come to your office hours when you don’t have any students in there. Or you can let me know next time you’re watching paint dry, and we could meet up for coffee or something.”

Levi blew a puff of air out through his nose. “Don’t tell me I’m going to start dating _you_ instead of Eren.”

“That’s not my intention. I’m perfectly content to be your friend.”

That threw Levi for a loop; he wondered if things at Wall really had changed more than he thought. While professors and students her had always been rather casual with each other, he never would have thought he could befriend a professor back when he was a student, but here he was, being propositioned for friendship -- among other things -- by students who saw him as an equal, and he was even more shocked to realise he saw them the same way. He was supposed to be their mentors, their teachers; there should be a sort of hierarchy in place here, shouldn’t there? But no; as much as he was here to teach these students, he found himself learning just as much from them, but about different things. 

“Professor Levi?”

“Just call me Levi. It’ll be less weird for all of us.” The song switched back out of unrecognisable dubstep and into something more familiar, and Levi had a feeling it wasn’t “Ice Ice Baby” this time. “You should probably get back to your boyfriend. I think he made a request.”

“It was probably Connie. The costumes were his idea. I’ll see you around.” Armin brushed past Levi just as the vocals began and revealed that the song was, in fact, “Under Pressure”; Levi watched her go and she smiled as she met up with Eren where he waited at the edge of the crowd. Eren bent down and left a brief kiss on Armin’s cheek as they disappeared back into the mob. 

Levi could feel the cracks forming in his resolve, spreading like the spider-webbed glass of a dropped iPhone without a cover, because he _wanted_. He wanted what Armin had with Eren; he could tell they loved each other in every way possible, and he wished that one day he could feel even a little bit of that, age differences and the teacher-student hierarchy be damned. 

If only he could get rid of that sick feeling in his stomach whenever he thought too hard about it, about how he could take advantage of Eren even without trying. Because that would always be a concern, as long as Eren was a student and Levi was a professor, or Eren was a young adult struggling to break into the art world and Levi was a well-known and well-off painter. 

Maybe someday Eren and Levi would be as equal as they wanted to believe they were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> songs for this chapter are: “[In the Dark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgEixhE3Oms)” by Dev, “[3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTs6oQx1WJY)” by Britney Spears, and “[Under Pressure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWdLt3Afjrg)” by Queen and David Bowie.


	19. My Weakness is Mushroom-Headed Anime Characters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tickle fights, ghost kisses, and mochi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: sexual content. accidental misgendering. levi’s sense of humor.
> 
> i’d like to note that, if eren seems a lot more prone to rational thought in this fic than he canonically is, that’s intentional, and a result of a fundamentally different experience in his formative years. no titans, for one, so he doesn’t have the same level of paranoia and reliance on survival instinct that he developed in the canon universe. most of the characters have been slightly changed for the purposes of this AU, but that change in particular i think might be somewhat jarring and i wanted to address it before i go any further, because it’s becoming more and more relevant.

Armin stretched her back while yawning, and let out a high-pitched squeal as her spine realigned. Eren, distracted from his game of 2048, looked over; Armin’s back was still arched off her bed, but she flopped back down and curled up around a pillow. She looked over at Eren, smiling lazily, her eyes half-lidded from recent sleep. 

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty.”

“Wh’time is it?” Armin slurred. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“It’s about one, actually. Work’s over. I got you breakfast.” Eren nodded at the plate on his desk, piled with eggs and bacon and a banana. “Well. Lunch, at this point.”

“Mmmmyou’re the best boyfriend ever.” Instead of getting up to eat, Armin rolled over, hoping to get a few more minutes of sleep. 

“You’re mistaken, but I’ll take the compliment. Nuh-uh, get up. You’ve been sleeping for ten hours already.” Just because they had danced until they both had blisters the night before didn’t mean she should sleep the day away; besides, Eren had been up since eight. Eren got up and crossed the room, intending to pull Armin out of bed. She was tangled thoroughly in her blankets. Eren wasn’t sure how this had happened since he’d extracted himself from her a few hours earlier, but he tugged on the most free-looking one and yanked it off of her. 

Armin whined and grabbed another blanket, pulling it tight around her in the hopes that she could retain some warmth. “Five more minutes!”

Eren plunged his hands into the folds of the blanket, managing to tickle her even through the fabric; Armin squirmed and kicked at him, not once actually making contact. 

“Noooo!” Armin shouted. She burst out of the blankets, intending to tickle Eren back like she had the night before, but instead Eren’s hands cupped her face and he kissed her, stilling her fingers’ movement toward his sides. 

She sighed, melting against Eren’s warm lips. She hummed a little to show how perfectly content she was with these developments, and then her hands continued in their quest to reach for Eren’s waist, but instead of tickling him, Armin pulled on him until Eren overbalanced and toppled down onto her. His hands flailed out on either side of her head, hitting the bed just in time to catch himself before he crushed her. 

“You could have just asked me to get closer,” Eren said. He leaned down and took Armin’s lips into a kiss again, deeper this time, with his head tilted a little and their tongues brushing lightly together. 

It was amazing how little one could care about morning breath or breakfast aftertaste when the kisses shared were so sweet. Eren tasted like eggs and ketchup and, faintly, coffee; Armin, more like sleep. But they barely noticed, instead licking into each other’s mouths and sucking on each other’s lips until their entire faces tingled and their lips were shiny and swollen and almost numb. When they pulled apart, and Eren rested his forehead against Armin’s so he could look into her eyes, they both still felt the faint press of lips still on their own, though there was nothing there. Ghost kisses. 

Armin felt something hard press against her thigh, and then Eren squirmed a little awkwardly; she assumed he’d just realised his own erection, too. Belatedly, Armin realised she was hard as well, and she let out a short little laugh. “Well, I’m awake now.” She slid her right hand under Eren’s left where it rested by her head, tangling their fingers together. 

“You’re so cute,” Eren said, and with his free hand he attacked her stomach with tickles again. Armin burst out laughing and her face started to turn red; Eren buried his face in her neck when she threw her head back, pressing sloppy kisses into the skin with tingling, swollen lips. Armin tried to tickle him back, but couldn’t get a grip on him, so she just let herself go limp, her laughter dissolving into squeals that probably pissed off their neighbours to no end, but those neighbours could go fuck themselves. 

Armin gave a particularly loud shout when Eren’s fingers found a spot on her ribs that was more ticklish than usual; he grinned evilly and focussed his efforts on that spot, and Armin thrashed under him. “E-E-Eren!” Armin moaned, a little this side of sexual, and she arched her back the same way she had to stretch it earlier, and Eren realised it may not really have been a tickle spot, exactly, that he’d found. 

Eren stopped tickling and smoothed his hand over Armin’s shirt, flattening the wrinkles he’d created, and Armin caught her breath. Then, Eren ran his thumb over the thin sliver of exposed skin at Armin’s hips, above the waistband of her pyjama pants where they’d slid down a little during her laughing fit. She smiled and her eyes fluttered shut, and the tips of Eren’s fingers slid under her shirt. 

“This okay?” Eren asked, and when Armin nodded his fingers inched up further, dragging the hem of Armin’s shirt along with them. 

He rubbed slow circles into her skin, watching carefully for her reactions; Armin bit her lip, smiling, and when she trembled Eren stilled until she opened her eyes and looked at him like she was wondering why he’d stopped. 

When his hand brushed over the ticklish spot he’d found on her ribs, Armin pressed her lips together tightly and hummed in a way that suggested she was holding back a moan. Eren kind of wanted to hear her properly, but he didn’t mention it; for now, he would just take her reactions as she gave them. He pressed down, and Armin inhaled sharply; he fluttered his fingers over the spot lightly, like he was going to tickle her again, and Armin’s lips parted to release the moan she’d held in earlier. “Aaahnn…” She clamped her mouth shut tight, a little embarrassed at the noise that had escaped her. 

Eren moved upwards again; he reached her chest, and Armin started to look a little uncomfortable, but she urged him on -- “I trust you” -- so Eren slid his hand over her soft skin, feeling thin pectoral muscle beneath and the rapid beat of her heart. Armin’s breathing picked up again, hitching as he brushed over her nipple, and then he squeezed the skin the way he might do to breasts; there was just enough skin that he could feel a little give under his hand, and Armin’s eyes flew open. Pink and red bloomed over her cheeks, a blotchy flush coming fast enough that Eren worried she might get a nosbleed, but she didn’t, and her lips parted again. 

“Oh,” she said; it was quiet, but conveyed all of the shock she felt. Eren squeezed again, and Armin shivered. “Hnn…” She gasped when Eren flicked her nipple a little more purposefully, then pinched it between his fingers and rubbed slightly. 

“Good?” Eren asked. 

Armin looked at him like he’d lost his mind; instead of an answer, she lifted her hips, hoping to get some friction on her cock, but it was a futile attempt; Eren’s body was too far away from hers, and she flopped back down with a defeated whine before she could rub against his thigh. Eren squeezed her chest once more, and Armin’s hips jerked involuntarily, searching for _something_. 

“Erennnn…” she whined, hoping he’d take a little pity on her. The hand that was curled over her own left its place and then reappeared on her hip. Eren’s thumb traced down the crease of her thigh, the rest of his hand following, and Armin lifted her hips again, hoping to speed him up. 

Eren could feel every twitch of the muscles under his hands, Armin’s fluttering heartbeat under one and the tensing of her thigh through her pants under the other. 

Armin curled her left hand around Eren’s right, where it still rested over her heart, and she squeezed with a constant pressure like she was using it as an anchor. “Eren. Touch me.”

“I am touching you,” Eren said, and he thought about asking her to be specific, but she glared at him as harshly as she could while this turned on, so he chuckled and let it go. Besides, she jerked her hips again as his hand travelled lower still, and that was a clear enough request for him. 

As his hand cupped the front of her pants, he realised this was the first time he’d actually touched her like this; usually (or as “usual” as two times could be) they would tangle their legs together and rub up against each other that way, hands never straying lower than hips. But now he could feel the outline of her cock with his own fingers. Armin’s head dropped back against her pillow as Eren applied pressure, and she groaned, her legs tensing up more. 

Was it too soon to be doing this sort of thing? Eren wondered only briefly, before moving his hand again, stroking Armin through her thin pyjama pants. 

“Oh… uh…” Armin made little breathy noises and squeezed Eren’s hand tighter; he tried squeezing her cock and her chest at the same time, and she gasped deeply. Her short fingernails started to dig into the back of Eren’s hand, but he ignored the pain, focussing instead on making Armin feel good. 

Armin looked blissful underneath him; her hair was splayed out around her head like a fire-red halo on her pillow, her eyes were shut tight and mouth open in a little O, her shirt was rucked up to her armpits, a blush spread from her cheeks and ears down over her neck and chest. Eren slowed his movements, lightened his touches, let Armin get used to a calmer stimulation, and then made a quick, rough move; he turned his gentle rubbing of her chest into a squeeze, and he pressed down on her cock and stroked it in one rapid move. Armin twitched and a choked noise, almost a squeak, escaped her throat. He did it again, a slow build-up followed by a little taste of letting go, and Armin’s whole body jerked. 

“T-take it out,” Armin demanded, and Eren wasted no time obeying. He yanked down the waistband of her pants and underwear until her cock was free, then pulled a little more until her pants were halfway down her thighs before taking hold of her and stroking, this time building up a constant pace, one fast enough to bring her to her climax. 

“Eren. Eren.” She repeated his name over and over in a whisper. Eren let her say it a few times, relishing the way the sounds flowed over her lips and tongue, before responding, “Yes, love?”

Armin whined at the endearment. “I’m-- I’m c--” she managed, before Eren shushed her. 

“Go ahead. I’ve got you.” 

He didn’t need to tell her twice; Armin went over the edge and came in his hand. The beginnings of a shout broke out of her throat, but then she went silent and only a rush of air forcefully left her, missing her vocal cords entirely. 

Armin shook a little as she felt the aftershocks of her orgasm ripple through her, and Eren continued to stroke her until she sighed and stopped trembling, signalling it was over. She felt stickiness on her stomach, and looked down to see most of her come had landed there; the rest dripped over Eren’s hand. He released her cock and looked at his fingers, and at the come drying there. 

Eren looked back at Armin, at her heaving chest and the come pooling in her belly button, at the lazy post-orgasmic smile and the haze in her half-lidded eyes. He leaned over her to kiss her softly; Armin’s hands instantly went to his jeans, unbuttoning them and pulling down the zipper. 

“I can take care of it,” Eren suggested, knowing she was probably moments from falling back asleep, but Armin insisted. She slipped her hand into his underwear and pulled out his cock, and Eren let himself go while her thin fingers tugged a little roughly at him. He kissed her again, and with their lips locked together and her tongue swirling at poking at his he came in moments, his own come adding to the stripes already on Armin’s stomach. 

Though a little winded, Eren knew he was far more energetic than Armin at this point, so while she nodded off for a little nap, he got off of her and reached for the roll of toilet paper that they used as tissues and wiped off their hands and Armin’s stomach. He tucked his own cock away and then pulled up her pants, finally covering her with a blanket. 

It looked like Armin would get her five more minutes of sleep anyway. 

\---

Monday morning, Armin got an e-mail from Dot Pixis, urging her to go to her night class; the replacement professor had in fact agreed to take over Armin’s Presidents’ Letters class, and she would be starting that night. Armin wasn’t sure what the entire resolution was to the situation with professor Verman, but she hoped, for other students’ sakes, that he’d been fired. 

While she packed up her things after her and Eren’s dining hall shift, she received another e-mail, this time from Levi. 

_Watching paint dry. Can I take you up on that coffee not-date?_

Armin chuckled, and Eren caught her eye. “It’s Levi,” she explained, and showed him the e-mail. “I can’t skip class again -- not now that Verman got replaced. Do you want to save him from boredom?”

“Yeah, why not?”

Armin e-mailed Levi back; _I have class soon, but Eren wants to see you. Is that okay?_

A few minutes later, Levi’s response came through; Armin suspected most of that time had been spent debating himself. _I probably should talk to the brat. Tell him yes. Where?_

“Where?” Armin asked Eren. He shrugged and suggested Horn Teahouse, so she passed that on to Levi. “Have fun,” Armin told Eren, and she kissed him on the cheek before leaving for class. A few minutes later, Eren was out the door as well, sweatshirt on and wallet shoved in a pocket. He sent an e-mail to Levi from his own phone, saying he was heading over to Horn and would meet him there. 

Levi was waiting outside the shop when Eren got there, his dark green cape-coat flowing in the still-cold wind of early March. He also had a hat on, and at first glance from across the street Eren thought it was a trilby and felt a bubble of worry form in his stomach, but then he realised, as he got closer, that it was actually more of a newsboy cap and his concerns about the stereotypical opinions of men who wore certain types of headwear were temporarily abated.

Levi spotted Eren, recognising him by his ever-present green Wall sweatshirt and his blue mop of hair, and his eyes flicked up and down over Eren’s body. Levi closed his eyes, silently wondering how he could set his heart aflutter with only the sight of Eren, fully clothed and ten feet away. Did Armin feel the same way? He-- _she_ probably did. Fuck. 

He must have scowled, because Eren looked concerned when he reached Levi. “You okay?” Eren asked. 

“Fine,” Levi replied. It was true; in a general sense, he was okay. He was just a little pissed off at himself, because he’d been fucking up like this a lot recently. He’d never slipped up out loud (well, except for that one time, but that was weeks ago), but in his head he’d kept calling Armin by male pronouns and epithets, only correcting himself after he’d already thought it, and he’d even done the same with Hanji, calling them “she” or a woman, which didn’t even make _sense_ because he’d never, ever known her -- _them_ , fucking shit -- that way. 

“You look like you want to kill something.”

“I’m just constipated,” Levi lied. Well, okay, it wasn’t a _total_ lie; he hadn’t actually shit yet that day. He was also a little bit emotionally constipated, and that sort of counted. Mostly, though, he didn’t want to admit that he was really, really awful at all this gender business. 

“Oh, uh, okay.” Eren held the door open for Levi. “Well, I think there’s a tea for that.”

Levi blew air out of his nose quickly in lieu of a laugh. “There’s a tea for fucking anything.”

Most of the tables were full; Horn wasn’t usually busy around dinner time, certainly not on a Monday, but then again the small tea shop was getting more and more popular. One of the low tables on a raised platform was empty; the pair took off their shoes and placed them out of the way of the stairs, then climbed up and ducked through the hanging strands of shells that served as privacy curtains. Moments after they sat down, the group at the other table on the platform got up to pay and leave, and they were alone. 

One of the Tea Devotees brought over two menus and a little bell; she asked if they had ever been there, and Levi said he hadn’t, so she explained that when they were ready they should ring the bell and she’d come over to take their orders, and she could answer any questions they had about the menu and give recommendations if needed. She then briefly explained how the menu was organised, and then mentioned the small food list at the back and the tea meal option, which was a cup or pot of tea and two small food items. 

Levi flipped directly to the black teas, glancing at the names and reading only one or two descriptions, then skipped to the food section at the end of the menu and read over each item on the tea meal list. 

“Get the Japanese Rice. Trust me.”

Levi read its description. “I… don’t think I’d like it.”

“Trust me,” Eren repeated. 

Levi sighed, and very quietly said, “I don’t like spicy things.” 

“Fuck,” Eren said. “That’s so cute.”

Levi’s head snapped up, fast enough to dislodge his hat, and he reached a hand up to hold it in place. “The fuck did you say, brat?”

Eren leaned across the table, briefly touching Levi’s hand. “Cute.” He closed his own menu, already having decided. “You ready?”

“Hm.” Levi nodded, his head bowed and face covered with the shadow cast by his hat. He rang the bell. 

“Are you hiding your face as a coincidence or because you’re blushing?”

Levi looked up. “Oi. I do not blush.”

He wasn’t blushing, but Eren decided to play with him anyway. “Mm-hm. Sure you don’t.” 

The server came over, and they ordered; Levi made a face at Eren’s tea order, but Eren just took it in stride, otherwise silent until the server left. 

“Chai? Are you trying to be a stereotype of an art student?”

“Shut up.” Eren swatted at Levi, flicking the brim of his hat. “My mom used to drink it all the time when I was young. Our whole house smelled like the stuff.”

“Going with the familiar, hm?”

“Well, I haven’t ever had it, but I always did like the smell.” Levi’s eyes narrowed, and Eren realised he didn’t know. Their first date -- not that it was really a _date_ -date -- wasn’t exactly the right time to break out the sad backstory, but he also didn’t want to leave Levi in the dark. “She, uh, she died before she ever made it for me, and I couldn’t really handle even smelling it for years after, once it faded from the house. But, you know.” Eren shrugged. “I’m ready for this. Been in here enough times while other people drank it.”

“If you start crying--”

Eren shook his head. “I won’t. This is going to be a chai with no regrets.”

Levi’s mouth twitched, the beginnings of a smile in his eyes, but he put his indifferent mask back on when the server knelt down by their table and set down their food. She left again, and returned a moment later with their tea. “Enjoy!”

Eren had his rice; Levi had a plate of sliced and honeyed fruit. They also both had ordered daifuku mochi. Eren’s chai came in a ceramic cup, filled to the brim, and Levi’s black tea was in a small steeping cup. The server had poured Levi’s tea out into another teacup, and explained how to re-steep it with the pot of hot water she left on the table. 

“You would get the sweetest things on the menu,” Eren joked. 

Levi narrowed his eyes at Eren. “Should I wonder why you got both of the Japanese food choices? You’re not a secret weeaboo, are you?”

“No. My sister recommended them to me the first time I came here, and they’re fucking delicious.” He picked up one of the mochi halves and held it out towards Levi. “Come on, taste.”

“You think I’m going to eat out of your grimy hands? I don’t know where they’ve been.”

“I washed my hands before I came here. I don’t like eating out of dirty hands either.” Eren held the mochi a little closer, and Levi scowled at him, but he leaned forward and took a bite anyway. 

“Shit, that is good,” Levi mumbled around the bite. 

_That was cute,_ Eren thought. He didn’t say it out loud, not again, but he felt like Levi knew what he’d thought anyway. He kept the hand held out, hoping Levi would eat more out of his fingers. “So what’s the hat for?” 

“Got paint in my hair,” Levi answered. He took another bite from the mochi in Eren’s hand. 

Eren could feel himself starting to blush, and hoped the dim lighting wouldn’t let it show. “And you didn’t wash it out? I’m surprised.”

“I didn’t notice until I was about to leave, and it was already dry. Acrylic is a bitch to get out of hair once it dries. Might just have to yank out the strands when I get home.” Levi examined the remaining mochi in Eren’s fingers; there was one bite left there, and he really, really wanted it because it was fucking delicious, but he probably would end up licking Eren’s fingers with the way he was holding it. He took a few sips of his tea while he debated it. 

“It didn’t get on your scalp, did it?” Though he wasn’t all that fond of painting with anything other than watercolours, Eren still knew how toxic acrylic paint could be, especially in the bright colours he’d seen Levi work with. 

“No. Just on the hair. I checked, believe me. I know what that shit can do.” He was well aware that several of the acrylics he’d purchased had toxic pigments; he’d avoided lead-white paint and carcinogenic ones, but there were still some skin irritants in his collection. It bothered him to have paint in his hair, both out of concerns about toxicity and because of his compulsive tendency towards cleanliness, but he also didn’t like being late, especially when he was the one who made the plans in the first place. There were ways to be rude that Levi enjoyed, but that wasn’t one of them. 

Hoping to change the subject, because thinking about the paint was making him more aware of it and he was starting to think he could actually feel it on his skin, Levi took the last bite of mochi between his lips. His lower lip brushed Eren’s thumb as he drew back, and Eren briefly resembled a steamed lobster with the fierce blush that burned his cheeks. His eyes also opened impossibly wide, like a deer caught in headlights -- and Levi really needed to stop using animal comparisons for his very much human not-boyfriend. His very much human not-boyfriend, who would probably be his boyfriend soon, and who already had another boy-- _girlfriend_ , god damn it! 

“Was something wrong with the mochi?” Eren asked, concerned when Levi’s eyes narrowed dangerously. 

“No.”

“Then what’s going on? You keep getting randomly angry.” 

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” Levi knew he wasn’t getting away with that, but it was reflexive. 

Eren looked insulted. “Don’t give me that. Be honest with me. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

Levi stayed silent.

“Come on, Levi. I want to help you. Do you think I’m going to judge you?” Levi did think that, exactly that, but he didn’t want to say it. “I won’t judge you,” Eren assured him. “I’ve probably done worse, whatever it is.”

Levi wasn’t sure what it was that convinced him; maybe it was the way Eren looked at him, or maybe it was the way Eren covered his own forearm gingerly like he was unconsciously protecting it, but Levi believed him, and believed that no matter what it was he could say, Eren had done something at some point in his life that he considered worse. And Levi didn’t push for that story, because it probably wasn’t any of his business. In any case, Eren was a good enough person at this point. He’d surely spread enough sunshine since then to more than make up for whatever he’d done wrong. 

“I just keep, ah, what’s the word… There’s a word for it, but I keep calling Armin the wrong things,” Levi confessed. “In my head, I mean; not out loud.”

“That’s all?” 

“All? Shouldn’t you be biting my head off?”

Eren tapped the side of his tea cup, testing the temperature; still too hot. “Part of me wants to, I won’t lie. I know how much it hurts her, and it’s so easy for _me_ to remember. But I also know most people have trouble with it. I can’t fault you for it; I just have to expect you to try your best. She’d say the same.”

“I do it to my friend, too. Hanji. The one I’m painting. They’re, well, like I told you, not really either gender and I’ve always known them that way, but ever since I saw them naked I can’t seem to remember that.”

“That’s… weird. There are probably some things you need to un-learn, is all I can say.” Eren blew on his chai, taking care not to let it spill over the rim of his cup. 

“Don’t I know it.” Levi poured more water into his steeping cup; the second steep was thirty seconds long, so he counted in his head. 

“Hey, can I have a piece of your fruit?” Eren asked. While Levi had been eating mochi out of Eren’s fingers, he’d finished half of his rice, but Levi hadn’t touched his own food. Levi seemed to surface from some sort of deep contemplation (in reality, he was only counting seconds) and looked down at his plate. 

“Yeah, sure. Apple or orange?” 

“Apple.”

Levi picked up a piece between his thumb and index finger, and held it out to Eren, who looked at him a little amused. Was he really offering to let Eren eat out of his fingers too? Eren considered the fruit before him. He could take it all in one bite, just sink his teeth in a little bit in the middle of the piece and tug it out of Levi’s hands. Or her could bite off half, leaving the rest between Levi’s fingers; then Levi would have to let Eren suck on his fingers to get the other half. 

Eren stared Levi down for a moment, trying to gauge what his reaction would be, and Levi held his gaze, challenging him to go for it. So Eren did. 

He bit down on the apple sliver, closing his lips over it before slicing it in half with his teeth. Levi had a triumphant sparkle in his eye, and he didn’t move at all when Eren swallowed and came in for the other half. He didn’t even blink when Eren’s lips hit the tips of his fingers, or when Eren sucked a little to get the apple out from between Levi’s fingers; in fact, Levi remained in the same position even after Eren had finished the whole slice. 

“Your fingers have honey on them,” Eren observed. 

“So they do,” Levi agreed. 

As soon as Eren started to lean in a third time, with the intention to lick Levi’s fingers clean, Levi snatched his hand away, popping one finger into his mouth, then the other. 

“Not fucking fair.” Eren put on his pouty face, which Levi found equal parts adorable and ineffective. “You really shouldn’t play with me like that.”

“Who says I’m playing? I _want_ you to lick honey off my fingers. I’m just still convinced I shouldn’t.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Eren tested his chai again, then took a sip when he deemed it sufficiently cool. “You know, when you convince yourself that you should.”

“You might be waiting a while.”

“Maybe not as long as you think. I mean, this is kind of like a date, isn’t it?”

Levi tried to resist, but the instinct was too strong; a light flush spread over his cheeks. He looked down at his tea (which was probably over-steeped) and poured it into the teacup, just so he could hide his face from Eren. It _was_ a date, wasn’t it? In a part of his mind, he rebelled against the idea, because he _really shouldn’t be doing this_ , but mostly he accepted it, because he _really wanted to_. “You’re… eager to get this relationship on the road.”

“Yep!” Eren smiled, and Levi swore he could feel a cavity forming from how sweet it was. 

When it came time to pay, Levi insisted on covering both of their bills; “I’m an internationally-acclaimed artist,” he said, “with more money to my name than you will ever see in your life, and I even have a steady job now. Let me pay for your fucking tea.” Eren tried to argue, but it was fruitless; in the end, Levi paid for both of them, and then gave a 30% tip, saying the Tea Devotee who had served them deserved the extra for putting up with “this brat’s bullshit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [someone drew art for this fic](http://nouveauqueer.tumblr.com/post/94664674337)! thank you so much, ciarafael! it’s hanji from chapter 17 (and slightly nsfw). 
> 
> if anyone else wants to do art, or, like, reference or talk about this fic in any way on tumblr, please tag it as **#fic: orange** and also tag me at my own tumblr, [nouveauqueer](http://nouveauqueer.tumblr.com/). some posts don't show up in tumblr's tags anymore (for instance, if there's a link anywhere in it) so i might miss the post if you don't tag me or send me a message.


	20. On Her Own Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin is a precious gift to the universe, a galactic treasure, the personification of all that is good, and we are all better off because of her existence. Also some people suck face; you can give Armin full credit for that one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was beta’d for the first time by [remembrance](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Remembrance/pseuds/Remmy-AoT). 
> 
> warning for sexual content.

Levi’s phone pinged near the end of his class, signalling an e-mail. He waited until the final hour was up to check it, because, at least in this class, his students usually afforded him the same respect. 

_From: Armin Arlert_  
_Coming to your office hours. Want coffee?_

He did, but it didn’t sit right with him to let her pay for him; he relayed his usual order to Armin, then checked his wallet for a ten-dollar bill. When she arrived in his office, Levi pushed the bill on her before he even said hello, and he took no arguments; he insisted on paying her back. 

“Yours was only four dollars,” Armin attempted. 

“I’m paying for yours, too.”

She knew from Eren recounting their not-date that trying to talk him out of paying for hers too was useless. “Then it’s eight total.”

“Just take the ten,” Levi insisted. “I don’t need it.”

Armin took it, a little reluctantly. 

“Get used to it.” Most people were uncomfortable with accepting money they didn’t feel they’d earned, but Levi had been on both sides -- the one giving, and the one receiving -- and he objected to the idea that there was any shame in taking money from someone to whom it meant little. Levi had always expected to be something of a starving artist, and his lifestyle tastes suited that expectation, so when he’d come into fame and an impressive amount of money he hadn’t found a use for most of it besides giving it away. Certainly a college student could find a better use for the money than he ever would. 

Armin took a seat in one of the chairs opposite Levi. 

“What did you want to talk about?” Levi asked her. 

“Nothing in particular,” Armin replied. “I just want to get to know you better. Whatever you want to talk about is fine.”

Conversation with Armin wasn’t as natural as it was with Eren; Levi couldn’t think of a thing to say. They didn’t know each other, and they didn’t know how to act around each other, and it showed in how they each tried to push responsibility for the conversation on the other person. Levi leaned back in his chair and stared at Armin, and he tried to come up with something to say, but no ideas came to him. 

“I’m not really a fan of small talk,” Levi said. 

“Neither am I. We could try sitting in companionable silence, if you prefer that.”

Levi shrugged. “I have grading to do, so it probably won’t be silent.”

“That’s fine. I won’t distract you.” Armin took a book out of her bag; it was a beat-up hardcover with its protective sleeve taken off and the gold lettering on its spine mostly worn away from years of use. She smiled at Levi, not bothered in the least by the lack of conversation, and started reading. 

Levi was a little bothered though. He’d always been able to talk to people; rather, he’d always been surrounded by people who were better at colding conversations than he was. Erwin always had something to say, Hanji had no end of information and one-sided conversation to unload on him, and even Petra knew how to fill a silence when Levi was lost. Eren, as well, could probably run his mouth for hours and charm everyone around him while he did it. Armin appeared content to stay silent, the only sound being the crinkle of paper as she turned a page, but compared to what Levi was used to, the room felt empty without any conversation. 

He stood and took the first painting out of the drying rack behind his desk. Levi dictated his evaluation to Siri, as usual, but something felt off. The back of his neck prickled. When he finished the first evaluation, he turned to Armin, and caught her as she tensed up and looked away. “What are you staring at?” 

“Sorry,” Armin said. “I was just wondering why you don’t write all this down.”

“I’m shit at spelling. I have a friend of mine edit what Siri writes.”

Armin chuckled. “Maybe I should tell Eren to write his papers that way.”

Silence fell again, and Armin turned back to her book. Levi sipped his coffee before moving on to the next painting. They continued in silence for the rest of the hour, and over time Levi grew more comfortable with the lack of conversation. It was nice, in a way, to just exist with another person’s presence. There was no pressure to engage, no expectation to entertain. Just Armin, the turning of pages, and soft huffs of laughter directed at either her book or Levi’s harsh remarks on his students’ paintings. She didn’t comment on the way Levi wiped away invisible fingerprints from his desk, or how he picked at the rough skin around his fingernails, though he was sure she noticed. In return, he didn’t comment on how Armin forcibly pitched her voice higher halfway through a laugh, or how her legs fidgeted to find a comfortable position that never seemed to come. 

_We all have our problems and our solutions_ , Levi thought. 

Having finished about half of the evaluations for his Hyperrealism class, Levi glanced at the clock and found his hour was up. He started to pack his bag and Armin did the same. 

“Hey… Can I walk you home?” Armin asked. “I have to go into town anyway.” A little bit of a blush crept its way onto her cheeks. Levi tried not to be jealous, but he had a few ideas about what she was so embarrassed about going into town for, and they all spelled out _she’s getting some from Eren and I’m not_. Or maybe that was just Levi’s ongoing self-imposed sexual frustration talking. 

He certainly didn’t mind her company, though; not now that he’d gotten used to her silence. “That’s fine.” Levi locked his office door behind the two of them. He led Armin out, his cape billowing behind him. 

Armin caught up to him easily; they were closer in height than either was with Eren, and their strides nearly matched. “I’ve been meaning to ask you -- Eren said you have a show coming up, and that’s why you’re not around for our class anymore. When is it? And where?”

“The opening is May second. Stohess Museum of Modern Art, in New York.”

“Maybe we’ll come see it. We live close to the city. It seems strange that they’d ask you so late, though.”

It did seem strange, and with so many people pointing out that fact Levi wondered if he should maybe call the museum and ask if they were _absolutely certain_ they’d given him the right date. Armin pulled out her phone -- a flip phone that looked like it had seen better days -- and nudged it open, then sighed. “I barely have any service in town. One bar. I was going to try and check the website, but...”

Levi took out his own phone, unlocked it, and passed it to her. He always got at least three bars of 4G in town. She thanked him, and tapped away at the screen while Levi navigated them towards the town and his apartment. 

“Um… Levi?” Armin caught his attention when they were nearly at the front door of his building. “You’re not on the calendar.”

Levi’s hand froze on the knob. “What?”

Armin showed him the screen. “This is May of this year. Your show isn’t listed. Not even the opening.” 

Levi yanked the phone out of her hands. “Are you fucking kidding me?” They told him with only months to spare that they wanted him to exhibit some of his work, and then they didn’t even advertise that he’ll be there. “That’s bullshit, absolute bullshit. I know I don’t have a fucking contract yet, but _still_ \--” Wait… why _didn’t_ he have a contract yet? 

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m sure there’s an explanation for this.” Armin put her hand on Levi’s wrist and gently extracted the phone from his hands, then tapped on the screen a few times. “You’re listed in 2015.”

“What.”

“Here, look.” She turned the phone around once again so Levi could see. _May 2, 2015: Levi Ackerman. More info to come._ “I guess they just told you the wrong year.”

“Did they?” Levi felt a little dizzy, and he replaced his hand on the doorknob for some concealed support. 

Armin noticed he went white as a sheet, paler even than his usual complexion, and she watched him carefully. 

Levi’s mind spun. Had they given him the wrong year? Had they told him a year at all? The woman on the phone hadn’t actually specified, had she… “ _We’d like to see four works between a year ago and the exhibit opening, and four more from previous years. The date we have planned for you is May second, is that acceptable?_ ” No. She hadn’t said a year, and Levi hadn’t asked, just assuming straight away that he was fucked. 

“I… did you want to come up?” Levi asked, his voice a little shakier than he’d like. “If not I think I’m going to call them and then pass out. Or maybe take a huge shit.”

“Too much information,” Armin said through a laugh, and shook her head. “Have a nice nap. And don’t scream anyone’s ear off.”

“I don’t scream.”

Armin returned Levi’s phone, then waved at him and dashed off towards the main road. Levi watched her go, grateful for her help but also baffled that she could have so easily found an answer to his time-crunch problem. 

He supposed he’d have to contact Wall as well, and Keith himself, to let them know he was back on for helping the Anatomy for the Artist class. But as he climbed the stairs, feeling more and more faint, he decided all the calls could wait for later. Levi barely had time to lock his door and shrug off his coat before he fell face-first onto his sofa and, within minutes, he was asleep. 

At his Thursday office hours, Levi spun around in his desk chair, his head leaned back to stare at the ceiling. He’d made his calls -- yes, his exhibition would be in 2015, and yes, he could come back to Anatomy if he had the time. He finished his evaluations the previous day, deciding that he didn’t really feel like going home yet, as he wasn’t in any rush to do so anymore. Armin was writing a paper so she couldn’t come by, and Eren hadn’t finished his homework yet when Levi checked up on him after his class. He wondered if he should set up another appointment with Erwin, maybe get back into the habit of actually going to therapy rather than skipping out on it whenever he could find an excuse. He shot off a text to Erwin, but he knew a response wouldn’t come for several hours, so he went back to spinning. 

There wasn’t even anything to clean; Levi’s office was spotless. He honestly felt like he’d be comfortable eating off the floor beneath him. He considered updating his website but…. _eeeeeuuuuuggghhhhhhh_. 

Spinning. Spinning. Spinning. 

“Ahoy, Captain!”

Oh look, a distraction. 

Levi set his feet down on the floor and his boots squealed a bit before he stopped spinning, facing the door. Eren’s smiling face peeked in, and then the student stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. “Armin told me you have an extra year before your show now.”

Levi only nodded in response. 

“Maybe I’ll see you more often, then.”

He probably would. In fact, he almost certainly would, and not just because Levi would be back to helping the Anatomy class. Over the last day and a half, while Levi had been consciously avoiding his painting, he’d done a number of things to keep himself otherwise occupied. He’d called Hanji, he’d visited Petra at work, he’d taken walks through town in the frigid early March air until he could no longer feel his face, and he’d cleaned his entire apartment as thoroughly as he possibly could. He’d even slept a full eight hours the previous night. And yet there was still down-time when he was left with his thoughts, and they always, _always_ strayed to Eren. 

Levi had written out a list of pros and cons to dating the student. He’d come up with a million different reasons why he shouldn’t, and only a handful of reasons why he should. But the reasons why he shouldn’t all boiled down to one thing, and it wasn’t that the relationship would be unethical. It was, exactly as Erwin had suggested, that Levi was scared. 

If there was one thing Levi had learned from the many therapists he’d seen over the course of his life, it was that if he was afraid of something, he probably should do it anyway. It was the things he wasn’t afraid of that were more concerning. 

With that in mind, he’d made his decision. All he needed was a _when_ \-- probably soon -- and a _how_ \-- did it really matter? 

“Maybe you will.” A weight lifted off Levi’s chest when he released those words, replaced with a warmth he could only describe as Eren settling himself snugly in Levi’s heart. The Eren who stood in front of him smiled impossibly more brightly, and Levi swore his eyes sparkled. Little shit. Levi looked away before he was blinded, back up at the ceiling, and tried to re-count the tiles. 

“Don’t get so happy about it,” Levi said. “I haven’t promised anything.”

“I wouldn’t want you to promise.” Eren stepped closer. 

Levi heard his footsteps, and tried not to react, but he jerked when he felt a hand ruffling his hair. “Fuck!”

Eren laughed while Levi tried to fix his hair, not even noticing the glare shot at him. “I don’t like promises. Only do what you want to do, when you want to do it.”

“You’re idealistic, aren’t you?”

“Someone has to be.” Eren sat on the edge of Levi’s desk, letting his backpack drop gently to the ground beside him. “How are you doing?” 

“Fine.” 

“Really?” Eren couldn’t believe him right away; usually when someone said they were fine, it meant that they really weren’t.

“Really. I’m much more relaxed without the looming deadline.”

“That’s good. What have you been doing lately? I hope you’re taking a break from painting, you’ve been kind of running yourself into the ground, or you seemed like it.”

“I am taking a break. I’ve been… cleaning a lot.” Well, it was true. Maybe not the whole truth. 

“Cleaning, huh? I guess I’m not surprised, but you should do something fun.”

Levi almost defended himself by saying “cleaning is fun” but no, it really wasn’t. Cleaning was necessary. “I’ve been talking to people more. Taking walks. There aren’t a lot of things I really enjoy aside from painting.” Except minor illegal activity, but he was a responsible capital-A-Adult, so petty theft and graffiti art were a thing of the past. 

There was also sex, of course, but he certainly wasn’t getting any of that. Not when the only person Levi wanted to sleep with was right in front of him, and he’d only just decided it was a halfway decent idea to pursue him at all. 

Eren nudged Levi’s chair with his foot, and it was a testament to how much Levi valued Eren’s presence that he didn’t immediately grimace at the proximity of dirt and road runoff and rock salt. “Maybe we can talk more? Or take a walk together?” 

Levi looked up at Eren, taking in the smile on his lips and the slightly guarded look in his eyes. He was nervous, a feeling Levi knew all too well. “Maybe.”

“I could walk you home.” Eren was hopeful; he knew Armin had done the same on Tuesday afternoon, and while Eren didn’t exactly have a reason to be in town otherwise, he wasn’t going to pass up a chance to be close to Levi.

“Fine. If you want.” Levi spared a glance at his clock; it was already half-past five, and his office hours had been over for thirty minutes. “I should get going. Might pick up dinner on the way home.”

“Do you not cook?” 

“I can boil water. Sometimes.” 

“I could cook for you, if you want. I’m not the best at it, but…”

Levi shook his head. “There’s no food in my house that needs cooking.” A fully-stocked refrigerator, to Levi, meant that he had fruits, vegetables, and milk. There were a few Cup Noodles and some cereal in his tiny pantry, but that barely counted. “I’ll buy you dinner if you want, though.”

“Nah, tonight’s buffalo chicken wings at Shiganshina.”

“…Shiganshina?” 

“Shiga-and-Shina. That’s what we’ve started calling the dining hall. I will walk you home though.” Eren hopped off Levi’s desk, and Levi gathered up his things and put his coat on. 

Levi ordered sushi from his phone while they walked, and Eren was patient while Levi picked it up -- or, he seemed patient, but in truth he was vibrating with energy, bouncing on his feet while he waited outside the restaurant. He pretended it was because of the cold, but really he was just excited to see Levi’s apartment again, especially now that it seemed like -- and he could totally be interpreting it wrong, which was why he didn’t push himself on Levi -- but it _seemed like_ Levi was actually ready to date him. Maybe he’d get a few more kisses out of this evening! What Eren wouldn’t do to feel Levi’s icy fingers heat up against his skin again, and his tight lips go soft and swollen against his… 

There was an extra little bounce in Eren’s step as he walked with Levi, and it took a lot of restraint for Eren not to just skip off ahead. He heard a loud snap, then, and felt something heavy slide down his back; Levi reached out his free hand just in time to catch Eren’s backpack. 

“Shit.” Eren inspected his bag; the strap had broken. He always wore his bag on the same shoulder so it was probably only a matter of time. He switched it onto his other shoulder, blushing in embarrassment. 

“Smooth,” Levi teased.

“Shut up. I’m excited.” 

“Really? I couldn’t tell. Are you coming up?” They had stopped in front of Levi’s apartment building. 

“If you don’t mind. Just for a few minutes.” 

He didn’t mind, not one bit, and he let Eren in. Eren took off his shoes without being asked, and he squirmed out of his sweatshirt while he waited for Levi to set down his food in the kitchen. Levi draped his coat over a chair and pulled off his gloves while he thought hard about his next course of action. 

Eren stayed by the door, watching Levi. He looked contemplative, or at least Eren thought that was what his expression represented, and he tugged at the fingers of his gloves one at a time until they came loose. Levi clutched the gloves in one hand, staring down at them, and for a moment Eren was concerned that he’d read everything all wrong and Levi didn’t really want him there. But then Levi looked up, sideways at Eren, and said, “What the hell are you waiting for?”

Eren grinned and moved toward Levi, who turned to him fully. He dropped his gloves on the table, and as soon as Eren was in reach Levi grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him down to face level. 

Here was the _when_ and the _how_ ; Levi kissed Eren hard and Eren met him with just as much enthusiasm. 

_Why did I ever say no to this?_ Levi thought, while Eren sucked on his bottom lip. He bit down lightly and the sucked again, worrying Levi’s lip until it swelled, and then he did the same to the top lip. 

Levi was impatient; the moment Eren let his upper lip go he sealed their mouths together once more, licking into Eren’s mouth with fervor. The kiss was messy and Levi could feel a little drool running down his cheek but he didn’t mind it, because it was Eren, and he tried to pull Eren closer before remembering the student was nearly half a foot taller than him. 

He hopped up on the table behind him and pulled Eren close between his spread legs. It was a familiar position of course, though as they locked lips again Levi realised that this time he was lower than Eren; his table wasn’t as high as the counter. Eren’s hands slid up Levi’s thighs and Levi hummed into his mouth; he was both annoyed and relieved when Eren’s hands settled on his hips. 

Levi didn’t feel like he was on fire this time; Eren didn’t feel a chill wash over him. Maybe it was because they’d left the “forbidden” aspect of their relationship in the trash where it belonged, but this felt more natural, more organic, but no less passionate. Eren tried to find a way to direct their kiss, since his position was better suited for it, but he didn’t think he was experienced enough for it. He wanted Levi’s lips to swell under his, and he’d gotten that already; without a clear goal in mind beyond “kiss the hell out of him”, Eren was lost. He did what felt good, but Levi’s hands moving insistently in his hair and his lips and tongue searching for more told Eren it wasn’t enough for him. 

Levi stretched his arms further, throwing one around Eren’s neck and tightening the other in his hair, and his shirt started to come loose from where it was tucked into his pants. Eren slipped his thumbs under the fabric, starting at the little windows opening at his hips, but not too much as he still didn’t know how far Levi was willing to go. Levi pulled back, his lips separating from Eren’s with a wet pop, and Eren stilled until he saw the lust in Levi’s eyes. 

“Are we only going to make out in my kitchen or do you want to try another room?” 

Eren was a little stunned at first; he’d been hoping Levi would say something more along the lines of “fuck me”. But yeah, this was pretty much exactly what they’d done the last time. “Where?” Eren asked. 

“Anywhere.”

Eren picked him up, hands under Levi’s ass -- Levi was heavier than he remembered, but not so heavy that he couldn’t carry him. Guided by the freedom of choice and his own hormonal hopes, Eren headed for what he thought was Levi’s bedroom, trying to navigate though Levi still insisted on kissing him while he walked. By a small miracle, the door was already a little ways open, so Eren didn’t have to fight with a doorknob; he kicked the door open and dropped Levi on the bed. 

Levi reached out for him, and Eren, completely unable to resist Levi physically begging even if he had a half-formed thought about teasing him, crawled on top of him and kissed him again. 

“No sex,” Levi said between kisses. Partially it was because he wasn’t sure he was ready for it; mostly it was because, for once in his life, Levi had absolutely zero lube anywhere in his house. He’d checked. If he was going to fuck Eren, he was going to _get fucked by_ Eren. “Anything else goes.”

“Yes, sir!” Eren said, before he latched his mouth onto Levi’s neck and sucked hard. Levi threw back his head and whined, his hands tangling in Eren’s hair again to urge him on. 

\---

Armin texted Eren around six-thirty, asking if he was coming to dinner; she received a response a little before seven saying “ _probly notther hve bem debpmmtd_ ” which she translated with great effort to “probably not, there have been developments” and assumed, until she heard otherwise, that his visit to Levi’s office hours had ended up better than either of them had expected. She sent him a “ _have fun ;)_ ” and got up to grab a few of the remaining buffalo wings for Eren to eat whenever he did decide to come back. 

Back in her room, Armin locked the door and set up Eren’s drawing board in front of her mirror. It was a little uncomfortable, but she moved their two desk chairs so that she could draw herself and then look sideways at the mirror. 

Armin looked at herself, really _looked_ , and tried not to think too hard about what she saw before she drew it. There were her wide shoulders… that was the curve of her spine… those were her large hands and her feet… that was her face, with the not-quite-feminine curve of her jaw, the messy wave at the ends of her fading red-orange hair, the huge blue eyes. The curving shadows that marked the folds of her skin, on her exposed wrists and neck, were easier on Armin’s eyes than the sharp angles of her wrinkled clothes. She was still flat chested, and unless she came into a surprising amount of expendable income very soon she’d stay that way for a long while, but after the way Eren had touched her, had _squeezed_ her… Armin didn’t mind so much. 

She didn’t love everything she saw, and she probably never would. But Armin had hope that someday she could look at herself and think, _this is okay._

She already had her assignment for Anatomy finished; it was a drawing of Eren, as usual, but this time with his shirt off because he’d asked her to. Armin had gotten distracted more than once while drawing it and she probably would have sucked his dick when they got back to her room if she hadn’t been so bone-deep tired. That said, this drawing was hers and hers alone, so Armin rolled it up and stuck it in the back of her closet to start a collection for whenever she decided to draw herself again. 

After a brief period of brainstorming on what to do until Eren returned (Mikasa and Jean were both at rehearsal; she had no papers to write; there was nothing happening on campus that night) Armin decided to take an early night and get into bed. It wasn’t until she was in her pyjamas with the blankets pulled up to her chin that Armin realised how tired she was. 

She awoke some time later to Eren crawling into her bed behind her. “Hey.” 

“You smell like sex,” Armin said in lieu of a greeting. 

“Yeah…” Eren sounded content. “I didn’t fuck him though. I, um, kissed him for a few hours.”

“So he finally said yes?” Armin asked. Eren hummed in the positive. “That’s good. I’m happy for you.” She turned over so she could face Eren; his eyes were closed at first, but then they opened and he smiled at her. “I like him.” 

“Do you?”

Armin nodded. “I didn’t talk to him much but I still feel like I got to know him a little. He’s a good complement to you.” After a few moments, she added, “He’s pretty good-looking too.”

“Do you mean that in the ‘he’s aesthetically pleasing’ way or the ‘I want to fuck him too’ way?”

“More the former. He’s all yours. Besides, I have you; that’s enough for me.” In the dark, Armin could barely see Eren, but the deep shadows on his face stabilised into a look of confusion, and Armin realised what that must have sounded like. “I’m not like you,” she explained. “I don’t have enough love to spread to a lot of people.”

“You’re pretty loving.”

“It’s different.”

“Okay…” He didn’t quite accept that explanation, but he let it go for the time being. “Well, if you change your mind…”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since i’m getting more people asking, i want to reiterate that YES you can absolutely make art for this story! just let me know when you post it, cause i’d love to see it! you can tag it **fic: orange** on tumblr and [send me an ask](http://nouveauqueer.tumblr.com/ask) or leave it in a comment here, whatever works for you. i’m also generally cool with people writing side-stories if that’s more your thing, though in that case i’d appreciate if you ask me first because there’s always a chance it’s something i’m already planning to write later.


	21. Show Me Your Teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi looks lovely. Also he apparently has feelings. Who knew?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more art happened! thank you so much! [parttimedemigod](http://parttimedemigod.tumblr.com/post/96410081870/) drew armin from chapter 5, and [ciarafael](http://ciarafael.tumblr.com/post/96592868499/) drew another adorable armin. 
> 
> aaaand continued thanks to remembrance for beta-ing!
> 
> warning: sexual content, and a brief panic attack.

Levi awoke to a tingling sensation on his neck and chest, and after a few moments of mild confusion he remembered the cause and he allowed himself a small smile in the privacy of his otherwise uninhabited bedroom. 

By the early morning light streaming in through his window, Levi could see the groups of hickeys clustered like stars all over his chest and abdomen. He lifted his arms to see the matching, gently throbbing marks at the pulse points on each wrist. When Levi finally rolled out of bed he made his first stop at his vanity mirror to inspect the marks on his collar and neck. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had so many little bruises on his body at the same time, but god, did Eren love to bite him. 

The first bite had come as a surprise to both of them; it was an accident on Eren’s part, his teeth scraping along Levi’s neck and then catching on the skin, but Levi spurred him on. He’d thrown out his arms to the sides and said, “Go for it,” and Eren had, only cheered on further by the content and often erotic hisses and sighs Levi released every time Eren’s teeth settled on a new area, never breaking skin but getting so so close, and every time his warm tongue soothed the abused skin and his breath tickled the wet spots. Levi was a little sorry that he’d let his pillow queen instincts take over rather than showing Eren some of his promised sexual prowess -- or kissing prowess, as it were -- but not _that_ sorry. Besides, Eren certainly hadn’t complained. He’d only ever grinned, with shiny teeth showing and framed by swollen, spit-slick lips, and he’d said things that Levi couldn’t remember come morning but, at the time, they made his head spin. 

The sun came up a little higher and brightened the room further, and Levi could see himself in even more detail. All the little red teeth marks surrounding dark bruises, and more colours in the hickeys themselves. The miniscule dots of purple and red scattered inside splotches of yellow and green and brown. The bruises in the shadows on his hips that Eren had left after he had rolled down the waistband of the only piece of clothing he’d left Levi with, his underwear, and look! That waistband was still rolled down, even after he’d slept. Levi looked down to his legs, and sure enough, more littered his thighs. A particularly nasty-looking bruise from a particularly hard bite stood out on the inside of his right thigh. 

Levi ran his hands over his skin, pressing gently to see which bruises hurt and which ones tingled. Even just the movement of his muscles was enough to feel aches and sparks of pleasure. 

The best part of it all was that most of the bruises held a little bit of a colour similar to that of Eren’s own skin, a honey-brown that was nothing short of beautiful. It was as if Eren had left a bit of himself behind, a temporary tattoo across Levi’s body, saying “this is mine”. 

Levi’s alarm went off, then, and he resigned himself to the day ahead. He headed to the shower, and enjoyed the way the scalding water beat down on his already tingling skin. After he was clean he looked at his closet and silently lamented the fact that he’d have to cover up the work of art that Eren had made of his body. 

He wasn’t sure how Eren had ever worked up the ability to leave, or how Levi himself had let him go; Levi supposed that after several hours of kissing, their lips had gone numb and they’d tired themselves out. He remembered the biting turning to soft sucks and gentler licks, and then Eren’s lips on his again, and a lazy haze settled over the two of them; he also vaguely remembered kissing Eren goodbye about twenty times at the door before he finally let him go. Now that Levi had started this thing with Eren, he never wanted to stop. 

Eventually Levi gave in and put his clothes on, sighing at how the fabric rubbed against his unevenly bruised skin. He had to look professional, of course -- no hickeys showing. He was a professor. With a touch of humour, Levi found a white cravat and tied it around his neck. He looked pretentious as hell and he knew it, but he supposed it was okay since he was making fun of the unspoken Professor Dress Code. 

Levi grabbed an apple for his breakfast. He would have preferred a peach or maybe some strawberries, but he wanted to eat while he walked and apples were less messy. He picked the shiniest, reddest one and after he washed it he stuck it in his mouth and bit down just enough that he could hold it there with his teeth while he put on his coat and locked the door. 

The weather was starting to warm up, and for most that might herald the coming of spring, but in Massachusetts it only signalled a brief respite before the promise of Second Winter. But for the time being, Levi enjoyed the sun’s rays striking his cheeks and the breeze ruffling his hair without slapping him in the face with an icy chill. He wasn’t much of a fan of the wind-chilled, pink-faced look he’d sported every morning for the past few months. 

He noticed that people on the street weren’t giving him the same wide berth they usually did. The crowd seemed to close in on him. Levi did a self-check, and even glanced at his reflection in a store window, but he wasn’t smiling or looking in any way supportive of the idea of other pedestrians entering his personal space; he could only assume he didn’t give off the same irritable, untouchable air as he usually did. His spirits were high, so he wasn’t surprised, though it did mean that a few people overlooked him and bumped into him, striking any of the many little bruises littering his shoulders. Ow. 

Levi entered the classroom first, before the students or Professor Shadis himself, though the lights were on and the door was already unlocked so Levi decided the professor must be around somewhere. He draped his coat over a chair in the back of the room and disposed of his apple core, then sat and waited for others to arrive. Eren rushed in at the last minute, flanked by his sister and his girlfriend, and Levi very nearly let his face betray the way his chest seemed to tighten. 

Eren smiled at him from across the room, and then seemed to take note of the cravat covering most of Levi’s neck, and his smile morphed into a proud and slightly predatory smirk. 

Last of all, Shadis entered the studio, looking annoyed. That wasn’t a good sign. 

“Levi. Glad to have you back.” He didn’t sound very glad, but then he never really did. “I’m sorry to do this to you on your first day back with us, but another model cancelled, and --”

The rest of the sentence was lost to the buzzing in Levi’s ears. It felt as if his entire world was crashing down on him. He fucked up. He fucked up so bad. He let Eren kiss him and suck a rainbow of colours into his skin, all over his body, the day before he was set to come back to a class where he’d posed in the buff more than once. Sure, he couldn’t have expected that he’d be asked to do it again -- but yeah, he could have. He should have expected it. 

“Levi?” 

“What?”

Shadis tried not to let his exasperation show. “I asked if you’d model for us again.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Absently Levi played with the end of his cravat; he must have pulled too hard, because it slipped down a little. 

Shadis rolled his eyes at Levi; it looked immensely creepy, with how sunken they were. “I think the kids can handle seeing a few hickies.”

“It’s not just a few,” Levi grumbled. “Can’t you get anyone else?”

“No, I can’t. If you can’t model, I’ll have to cancel class.”

Levi’s hand went up to his forehead, covering his eyes. He tried to sound exasperated, irritated even, but mostly he was just terrified. “Yeah, fine. I’ll go… wash my face, take a shit, whatever.”

Levi lost track of how long he spent staring at himself in the bathroom mirror after his face was clean, clutching his cravat against the edge of the sink, but the door opened behind him and Eren appeared in the mirror beside him. 

“Hey,” Eren said. “We’re done with homework crit.”

“Yeah. I’ll be right over.”

Eren let the door shut and stepped into the bathroom a little more. “How bad is it?”

Levi turned around and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt. Dark bruises were spread over his collar, and in some places there were so many that they clustered together and formed hand-sized expanses of blotchy green-brown. The teeth marks certainly didn’t help; they ringed almost every bruise, adding yet more contrast to his pale skin. In the calm morning light of Levi’s bedroom, when he could appreciate them privately, the bruises had been proof of a memorably lovely night; in the harsh light of the men’s bathroom, and under the looming pressure of having to show twenty young adults and an irritable old man what exactly he’d gotten up to the night befpre, it looked like he’d been attacked by a cannibal. 

Eren whistled. “Wow. I did all that?”

Levi nodded. “That’s the worst of it, but it’s everywhere. Go back to class. I’ll be there soon.”

“Alright.” Eren swooped in to plant a quick kiss on Levi’s lips before he left the bathroom. Levi followed him out after less than a minute, and he ducked behind the changing screen in the corner of the studio to strip off his clothes Usually he didn’t care for the privacy, but he’d rather employ the “rip it off like a band-aid” method this time. 

He emerged from behind the screen completely nude except for his bruises, and a hush fell over the room in a wave. The closest students went silent first, staring at him, some slack-jawed. Someone tripped and dropped all their materials, but no-one paid them any attention; even that student just stared at Levi from the ground as he stepped onto the model stand. 

Levi blocked it all out. Mentally, he drew inwards, only paying attention to the passage of time and Shadis’s instructions to him. 

At the end of class, after Levi was once again clothed, he had only one thing to say, and he betrayed none of his anger as he walked to Shadis. The mask of impassivity didn’t break. His fiery rage only shone through the light in his eyes, and Shadis didn’t know him well enough to see it. 

“Request a fucking backup,” he said in a monotone. He didn’t stop, and barely looked Shadis in the eye; just kept walking right on through the door. 

That was mortifying, Levi thought as he headed for his office. He felt dirty, disgusting, and most of all _judged_. He could hear footsteps trailing behind his, so he sped up, preparing to break into a run if need be. Levi just wanted to be alone for five damn seconds, to collect himself before word got out to the afternoon studio period that he was some kind of sex fiend, that he _loved_ being bitten and sucked. And, god, they probably all knew Eren did it, too, or at least thought he did. It’s not as if Eren was subtle about how much he wanted Levi; if Levi was honest with himself, he wasn’t really hiding his desire either. 

Levi finally made it to his office, and unlocked the door to let himself in. He heard the trailing steps get closer, but before he could shut himself inside a foot wedged itself into the door before it closed. 

“Motherfucker!” Eren shouted as the door closed on his foot, and then he pushed his way in. “Levi. You’re not okay.”

“No, I’m not.” 

Eren kicked the door shut and immediately enveloped Levi in a hug. He wasn’t that much bigger, but enough so that Levi felt comfortably surrounded by his warmth. He was cozy, and he hugged just tight enough for Levi to feel secure in a way he rarely felt consciously. 

Levi realised he was shaking only after he buried his face in Eren’s chest. His heart raced, his breath came fast, he felt like he was choking -- not this again. “No,” he whispered, breathless. 

“Shh, I’ve got you.” Eren rested his chin on the top of Levi’s head and rubbed Levi’s back slowly. “You’re breathing really fast. Can you slow it down?” He started to count out seconds, not letting Levi go for a moment, and Levi did his best to match his breaths to the times Eren set for him. 

“Good,” Eren said, when Levi got a hold on his own breathing. “You’re doing great.” Eren held him like that until Levi calmed down, and didn’t let go until Levi tried to extract himself. 

“Thank you,” Levi mumbled. He wasn’t particularly fond of others seeing him while he panicked, but Eren had known exactly how to bring him down from the attack. 

“No problem. I used to get them all the time.” 

The idea that Eren -- cheerful, too-wise-for-his-age Eren -- could have ever suffered from panic attacks was almost laughable to Levi, but then again, it affected all kinds of people, didn’t it? He wanted to ask why, what caused them, how did Eren seemingly get better… but he wasn’t sure he could handle the explanation in this state. 

“You feeling better now?” Eren asked. 

“More or less.” Levi felt drained, more than anything. He just wanted to sit down, or maybe take a nap. Just… not care about anything for a while. But he had a job to do. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and put his “murder face” on. He should probably eat before the next class, but he wasn’t sure he could stomach anything at the moment, so he resolved to make up for it at dinner. 

Eren leaned in close and whispered, “If it helps, I think you looked really fucking hot.”

Levi felt a smile tug at his lips, and he was too exhausted to hold it back. He turned his face up to Eren, meeting bright eyes with his own. “Maybe I’ll let you do that to me again sometime.” 

“You seemed to enjoy it.”

“Mm. I did.” Levi stood on his toes, and Eren leaned down to meet him for a kiss. Eren pulled Levi’s cravat and collar out of the way, and he pressed his lips to the soft, bruised skin of Levi’s neck. “We can’t do this here,” Levi whispered. 

“I know.” Eren backed off, and he righted Levi’s neckline. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“You should go,” Levi said. “Not that I don’t want you here, but your friends must be waiting for you.”

“Yeah. That reminds me, Mikasa will probably threaten you at some point in relation to my well-being. Just be honest with her, and don’t try to fight her. She’s a great friend, and a terrifying enemy.”

“Noted.” Levi allowed Eren one more kiss before he shoved him out the door. Then he took a seat in his squishy office chair and waited for one o’clock to roll around. 

The afternoon model hadn’t cancelled, so when Levi re-entered the studio it was to stares and pointed whispers but no expectations to show the proof of the rumour that had spread over the last half hour. In a way, Levi could sympathise; it wasn’t often that such interesting gossip came about in relation to a professor. On the other hand, they made him feel even more dirty, and it wasn’t exactly a pleasant feeling. It was unprofessional to come to work covered in hickeys, but it was also rude as fuck to make fun of someone for it. 

Levi’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he whipped it out, grateful for a distraction from the twenty or so pairs of eyes on him. The number wasn’t in his contacts, but the text started with _hey this is eren._ Levi didn’t remember giving Eren his number, but he’d probably gotten it from the school website. 

The rest of the message read: _do you mind if i text you?_

He replied that he didn’t mind, then saved Eren to his contacts. 

Throughout the three-hour studio period, Eren texted Levi frequently. Though Levi only checked the messages during breaks, it was comforting to feel the tell-tale buzz of his phone against his thigh while he gave drawing advice to (ungrateful, judgmental) students. 

Among Eren’s multitude of text messages were information about the weather -- _can you believe its gonna snow again tonight_ , opinions on his own daily routine -- _art homework is awful i think we should ban it_ , and numerous updates about a visit to the studio from his girlfriend -- _armin brought me hot chocolate, i love her_ … _she’s reading while i draw. i dont think she noticed but theres sunlight coming in thru a round window and hitting the wall behind her. she looks like an angel_ … _finished drawing. armin and i are going for a walk by the pond. she says hi._

Levi responded sporadically, but mostly just let the texts settle into his mind and calm him. Eren couldn’t be there to comfort Levi while he tried to hold himself together; they both had lives to lead. But he still made himself available in some way, to let Levi know that he wasn’t alone. 

A few minutes before the end of Levi’s class, Eren sent, _going to digital art then dinner shift until 730. you free after that?_

Levi could paint; in fact, he really should. He’d taken three days off so far since Armin had told him he had an extra year to work. But… he had another _year_. It was irresponsible, and childish, and reminiscent of the procrastination habit Levi had worked so hard to kick, but Levi wanted nothing more in that moment than to see Eren again. 

_Yes_ , Levi replied, and then, _What did you have in mind?_

Eren’s answer came a few minutes later. _didnt expect you to say yes. ill get back to you on that._

They ended up at Levi’s apartment once again, finishing off half of a store-bought pie as dessert, and then licking the flavour out of each others’ mouths. Levi had a thought as Eren tried to push his tongue down Levi’s throat; he didn’t want their relationship to be purely physical. He wanted to really get to know Eren, and to get attached to him in the way he never had with anyone else. He thought Eren wanted the same. And, in fact, when the taste of over-sweetened strawberry and flaky pie crust faded, Eren pulled away from Levi and laid his head on his chest, and he started to talk. 

Eren told Levi about himself, and asked him questions in return. Levi played with Eren’s shirt while they talked, and at one point tugged at the edge of his sleeve and revealed a bit of the tattoo he’d seen only as a dark, shadowy blur the night before. 

“What’s this?” Levi asked. 

“Oh.” Eren rolled up his sleeve enough to reveal the whole thing. It was a knife, done all in black ink. “It’s a memory.”

A memory that involved a knife… “Do I want to know?”

Eren tensed. 

“You don’t have to tell me.” Levi was curious, but not enough that he was going to force it out of Eren. 

“No, I want to tell you. But I can’t. It’s not just my story.”

Levi could respect that; he was holding on to plenty of memories that belonged to other people, after all. Eren had been nothing if not open with him so far, so he didn’t really have a reason to doubt he’d find out sooner or later. “That’s fine.” 

Eren looked toward the windows; the curtains were drawn closed, but a soft orange glow spilled through them, the kind that signalled winter weather. “Oh. It was supposed to snow.” He rolled off Levi and went to the window to check, pulling back the curtain. “Shit.”

Levi sat up. “How bad is it?”

Eren stepped to the side, holding open the curtain. Flurries fell gently past the window, and it seemed the snow had only just started to stick to the sidewalks. “Not too bad, but I only have a sweatshirt. It’s going to be cold as balls out there.”

“You can stay here,” Levi offered. 

Eren smiled, as if he’d like nothing more, though there was a crinkle around his eyes that held a _but…_ “I have work in the morning.” 

Levi let Eren borrow a scarf and some gloves; he would have given him a proper coat, too, but Eren wouldn’t fit in any of his clothing. He played with the drawstrings of Eren’s hoodie at the door to his apartment, not yet ready to let him go. 

“Thanks for having me,” Eren said. He didn’t seem to want to leave either; his hands stayed firmly on Levi’s waist, holding them close together. 

“Thanks for coming.” After a pause, Levi added in a whisper, “And for calming me down earlier.”

None of Levi’s multitude of failed relationships had prepared him for what he felt in that moment. He had never had this sort of attachment before Eren, or this strong of a need to just touch someone -- not fuck, just touch. It terrified him, but it also excited him. It wasn’t often that anything could surprise Levi, but if he’d been told a year ago that he’d get dizzy when a dorky nineteen-year-old smiled at him… So yeah, this was a surprise. And Eren continued to shock Levi every day. 

Eren’s hand slid up into Levi’s hair, brushing over his undercut, making Levi shiver. “I should go,” Eren said, but it was clear from the way he moved in closer that he really didn’t want to. 

Levi didn’t want him to leave either, but he knew he couldn’t stay. “Armin’s waiting for you.”

Eren’s eyes widened comically, and he looked between Levi and the door. “I-- damn it. Is it always going to be like this?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t want to leave you, but I want to be with her too.”

“Go home.” Levi stood on his toes and kissed Eren’s chin. “Text me when you get there.”

“I will.” Eren leaned down and gave him a proper kiss goodbye, and then they separated. Levi stood at his open door and watched Eren go down the stairs until he was out of sight. 

Before going to sleep, Levi took a good, long look at all his bruises again. They were starting to fade, most turning a sickly yellow-green or a frightening blotchy indigo. But some were still dark and beautiful, little patches where it seemed like Eren’s colour had bled into Levi’s own, leaving traces of him behind. 

Levi settled into bed, warm under the blankets piled around him. His phone, resting on his bedside table, still displayed Eren’s most recent message; _im home. miss you. good night levi._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i realised partway through this chapter that i’m writing levi as demiromantic and as soon as i realised it, i fully embraced it, because gosh that’s so fitting. 
> 
> songs for this chapter: “[teeth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk5vRoc0_nk)” by lady gaga


	22. Next-Level Warmth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pair of dorks go on a dorky date and have dorky (sometimes sexy) conversations. They visit another dork and have a dork party. Nothing makes sense anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ciarafael wrote a thing](http://ciarafael.tumblr.com/post/97205002784/) inspired by orange! thank you so much <3 and thanks to [remembrance](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Remembrance) for beta-ing <3
> 
> warnings: transphobic slurs and mentions of past transphobia.

Armin woke up to _warmth_. This was not normal warmth; it was super-heated, next-level, surface-of-the-sun warmth. It was all-encompassing warmth; it was self-cleaning oven warmth; it fully enveloped Armin in its sweaty embrace. She was kind of uncomfortable, actually, which was strange because she usually really liked being warm, especially if it involved soft blankets and cuddling with her nice-smelling best-friend-slash-boyfriend. 

She breathed in deep and caught the lingering scent of snow. She opened her eyes; dark skin, darker in the shadow of their blanket burrito, greeted her. 

Eren. Okay, that answered why it was so warm. Well, mostly; he was generally very warm, warmer than most people, but not _this_ warm. 

“Eren?”

Armin received a sniffle in reply, and then Eren stirred. “Mmmn?”

She assumed that was supposed to be some form of her name. “What time is it?”

“Dunno.” Eren reached out of the blanket burrito and groped around blindly for his phone. “Ugh. Seven fifty-nine.” A moment later, Eren’s phone trilled out its alarm, signalling he needed to get up for work. He winced. “No.” He swiped the alarm off the screen and tossed it back out of the burrito, nestling in closer to Armin. 

“Eren.” 

Ignoring Armin, he remained curled around her. He started to snore lightly, but he was obviously faking. 

“Eren. You have work.”

“No I don’t.” He sounded nasally; not a good sign. Eren never got sick. 

“Eren. You have work, and you need to call out if you’re sick, and I don’t want to catch whatever you have.”

Eren groaned loudly and tugged at the blankets, allowing Armin to get out. He then reached for his phone and shot off a text to his supervisor before curling himself back up in his own personal oven. Armin crawled into her own, significantly less warm bed. 

Several hours later, Armin got out of bed and went downstairs to get them both brunch. Eren was already feeling much better, and his apparent fever had subsided; Armin was a little jealous of his over-active immune system. He still sniffled a bit, but he scarfed down his potato pancakes and chicken-apple sausage and banana with apparent vigor, only stopping once to cough. Armin passed him a multivitamin, which he didn’t usually take, but it couldn’t hurt, and she had the ‘Immune Booster’ kind. Not that he really needed it. 

“Feeling better?” Armin asked, though she could tell he was. Eren nodded, mouth too full of banana to respond properly. “That’s good. Are you going to start wearing a proper coat now?”

Eren shook his head and swallowed. “Spring is almost here!”

Armin sort of pitied him; Eren obviously hadn’t heard about Second Winter yet. “At least dress a _little_ warmer. You can’t be missing work every time you go and visit Levi.”

Eren’s face turned redder than Mikasa’s ever-present scarf. 

Armin’s brain battled between pride and jealousy. “Did you do it?”

“No!” Eren shouted. “N-not yet.”

“You sure? He looked pretty _well done_ in Anatomy.” Okay, it was mostly pride. She was happy for him. 

Eren shook his head again. “You’d be the first to know. I want to, but… I don’t know if he does.”

“He _does_. I know he does.” How could anyone _not_ know? Armin was honestly surprised Levi hadn’t yet received a stern talking-to from the Art department head or one of the Deans or something like that. 

“I don’t know. He said ‘no sex’ the night I… well, the night I marked him up like that.”

“Just because he’s not ready yet doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to.” It was a feeling Armin knew all too well; she definitely wanted to sleep with Eren, but when it came right down to actually doing it, well, she preferred to move a little slower toward that point. Eren was certainly being patient with her -- but, wait... Did this mean he wasn’t really patient? Did it mean he was faking it, and just waiting for the moment when she finally gave him what he wanted?

Eren sighed. “I’m fine with waiting. I mean, I guess I’m not really ready either. I don’t… totally know how it all works, and, well, I’m still kind of new to the idea of, you know, liking men.” He made a face. “Personally, I mean. Not in general. Never thought about it before him, I guess. It’s for the best though.”

“What do you mean?”

Eren’s frown deepened. “Well, if I had thought about it more before him -- I mean, I did, but it was more in a, I guess, hypothetical way… But if I’d really thought about it, I would have ended up thinking about you, and that would have been, well, wrong. So I like that he’s the one who made me realise I’m a little bisexual. Or a lot bisexual, I don’t know.”

Armin had never really thought of it that way. She had felt a little hurt that Eren didn’t know he loved her, romantically, until he found out she was a girl; she thought that maybe herself as a boy was too gay for him. But that wasn’t the case at all, was it? 

“Maybe some part of me knew all along that you were a girl, and I was waiting for you to tell me before I loved you, so I could love you properly, for everything that you are.” Eren shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just an idea.”

Armin wasted only a moment staring at Eren with her face softening into a smile, and then she leapt across the room and tackled him in a hug that pinned him down on his bed. 

“Whoa!” Eren laughed out loud as Armin peppered kisses all over his face. 

“Sorry, I’m just happy!”

“Good. I like it when you’re happy.” He smiled up at her. “And not just because I get kisses.”

“Dork.” Armin swatted at his arm playfully, then kissed him again. 

“I missed work,” Eren said, suddenly realising the irresponsibility of his actions. He wasn’t even that sick. “I did call in sick, right?”

“Well, you texted in sick.” Armin hoped that was an acceptable method of notification for his supervisor; he looked relieved, so she assumed it was. “Just make sure it doesn’t happen again. It shouldn’t be too hard. This is the first time I’ve ever seen you get sick.”

“It might be the first time I’ve ever been sick. I don’t remember even having a cold before.” Then again, there were a lot of things Eren didn’t remember, and illnesses had never been high on Eren’s list of prized memories even before the accident. 

He supposed he would have at least remembered, maybe, something like his mother taking care of him, but no. He remembered her caring for Mikasa while she was sick, but never for him. 

Maybe if the accident had never happened, he would have finished high school with perfect attendance…

Armin could tell his thoughts were straying into a place he shouldn’t go, so she brought him back to the present with another kiss. She hadn’t seen him go into this headspace in a while. “You okay? You looked like you went somewhere else.”

“Yeah, I’m okay. I guess… some things have been happening, bringing it all back, you know?”

“Like what?”

Eren put his arms around Armin, letting her lay on him properly. She pillowed her head on his chest while he answered. “I think the first thing was you dropping those plates…” It had been weeks, and he’d only happened upon these moments of unpleasantly reminiscent headspace recently, but he was certain there was some connection there. “I had chai on my not-date with Levi, and, well, you know it reminds me of Mom. Levi kind of panicked yesterday and it reminded me of how I used to freak out a lot, and I guess how I still do…” He had definitely panicked at least a little bit when Armin had crashed a stack of plates on the floor. “And last night he asked about my tattoo…”

“Oh.” That was an old memory, older than the accident by several years. But of course it was still prominent in Eren’s mind. Something like that was hard to forget. Or at least Armin assumed so; she hadn’t been a part of it. 

“Sorry.” Eren seemed to curl in on himself. “I know you don’t like it when I bring it up.”

“Hey…” Armin placed her hands on either side of Eren’s face and tilted his head up so he looked at her. “Yeah, it makes me a little uncomfortable. But mostly it hurts me to see you in pain. You don’t like remembering what you did; anyone can see that.”

“I don’t regret it. I know I did the right thing. It’s just… That doesn’t make me a good person. What I did was still horrible.”

“Maybe we’re not good people.” Armin shrugged. “Not by nature anyway. Who knows? But you do good things, Eren. Even when you do bad things, you do them to help people.”

“I’m glad you think so.” Eren reached out for his phone. “What time is it, anyway?”

That was the end of that conversation, or at least for the time being. They would come back to it, Armin was sure. But if breaking off temporarily would avoid another of Eren’s “spirals”, as he called them, then it was okay. 

It was after noon, so they got out of bed, but quickly realised neither of them had anything to do. Being neither frequent bloggers, nor writers, nor hardcore gamers, nor anything else that took up huge amounts of their free time, they had actually finished all of their homework early enough that they had a free weekend. 

They didn’t really want to spend it all in bed, though, so they dressed, and Armin threw on her coat and coerced Eren into wearing a few more layers of clothing under his sweatshirt. Mikasa, of course, was at rehearsal, along with about half of their friends, so Eren and Armin headed into town, just the two of them. They considered getting tea, knowing that Horn Teahouse would be comfortably warm, but when they passed by they saw it was packed full and continued on towards the bubble tea shop further into town. 

Armed with hot milk teas, the pair sat down at the bar counter by the front window and looked out at the street. Though it was mostly empty as a result of the still cold weather, a few brave souls were enjoying their weekends with some shopping, or even simply walking if they were a certain kind of masochistic, and they hurried past, never stopping to look at the couple in the window. 

Their hands were clasped loosely between them on the counter, Armin’s right in Eren’s left, the point of contact a comforting source of warmth against the cold drafts of wind from the door. 

Eren’s hand tightened around Armin’s, and she turned to him, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“Just some asshole,” Eren grumbled. An elderly woman walking by had given them a dirty look, like she took personal offense to the fact of their existence, and Eren wondered at the many shitty reasons she could have come up with for such a response. Did she think they were two guys, and think their public hand-holding too affectionate? Could she tell Armin was a trans woman, and rejected her identity? Did she have a problem with them being an interracial couple? 

The woman entered the shop, and Eren tensed, ready to fly into a rage if she so much as breathed on them. 

She edged her way in behind Eren, and he sucked in a breath deep enough for his loudest shout, but the woman spoke before he could. “Wear a warmer coat, child. It’s cold out there.”

Eren deflated. “Oh. Yeah.” He laughed nervously. “I thought you were pissed at us.”

“For what?” 

When neither Eren nor Armin responded, she looked between them and then smiled; the wrinkles around her eyes and the frown lines around her mouth pulled at her expression, and she appeared to have an unnatural mix of a smile and a grimace. Eren supposed he’d misread her expression; she seemed to have a particularly nasty case of Resting Bitchface. 

“Not at all. Just don’t want you kids getting sick.” She left them to get herself some tea. 

“What was that about?” Armin asked.

“I thought she looked at us funny. Like, disapproving.” 

“Oh.” Armin turned to look at the old woman, who was paying for her tea in a mix of single dollar bills and small change, as senior citizens tended to do. “I guess she was really just a worried grandma.”

“Maybe I’m seeing things. I guess I’m just defensive.”

“You think?” Armin smirked at him, making fun of him a little. 

“Hey, I’m not _that_ defensive.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Eren realised that he totally was, and what he’d just said only proved it. Armin snickered a little. “I think it’s justified, though. To worry what people think of us. They’re not always going to be so nice; sometimes they really are going to look at us like we’re the scum of the earth, and sometimes they’re going to treat us that way. I can’t exactly let my guard down, can I?”

Armin didn’t have a response for that. She agreed with him, but didn’t particularly want to live her life waiting for the next time someone would yell in her face for daring to assert who she was. But then again, she _did_ live that way; she didn’t really have a choice. There would always be another asshole. 

\---

Eventually the sun went down, and it became far too cold to be anywhere but huddled in their beds back in their room. So they went back. 

“We should probably get our train tickets.”

Eren was confused for a moment, and then he turned to Armin with a questioning look. 

“Spring break?”

“Oh!” 

Eren had forgotten; no surprise there. Armin had train fares for the evening of March 14 open on her laptop. “It’s about thirty-five each way. We might be able to get a ride to Springfield from one of our friends this time.”

Eren winced at the idea of getting in a car, as usual, but also as usual he decided to put his big boy pants on and save a little money by not adding bus fares to their trip. “Who has a car?”

“Jean does.”

Eren groaned. 

“He’s not that bad.”

“He’s a coward.”

Armin sighed. She could never make sense of Eren and Jean’s relationship. They were friends, certainly, but they also hated each other, or at least acted like they did. “He’s _practical_ , and his priorities are different from yours. I think he’s pretty brave, but regardless, he’s a good person.”

“Debateable. How’s his driving?”

“Marco says he’s decent.” Armin didn’t mention that Marco himself was an incredibly reckless driver with several years of experience weaving unsafely between fast-moving European vehicles on a motorcycle even before he technically had a license for it, and as such was probably not the best qualified to judge. Eren didn’t need to know that. Besides, Armin was rather certain Marco liked how everyone thought he was some sort of innocent, law-abiding, cute international student to be protected at all costs. He could probably get away with murder. She kind of knew the feeling. 

“I guess that’s okay, then…” Eren started his own search for train tickets from Springfield to New York. “Should we remind Mikasa?”

“She’s not coming home.”

“What?”

“She didn’t tell you? She and Sasha are doing some sort of road trip thing together. They’re leaving Saturday morning.”

Eren felt a little betrayed that she hadn’t told him. He’d be alone with his dad, assuming Grisha was even able to take time off beyond picking him and Armin up from the train station. He wasn’t too hopeful. 

Though it did mean he’d have the house to himself… Eren couldn’t help but grin when he realised he could spend all week practically worshipping Armin in the privacy of his own home, and suddenly he was looking forward to spring break much more. 

The pair decided on a departure time and bought their tickets, and in their heads they tried to come up with the many ways in which they could spend their break together. 

“Hey Eren…” Armin started. “You know, you’ll probably be alone most of the break. Your dad almost never gets time off work, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine, though. You probably want to spend time with your granddad.” As much as Eren wanted to spend all that time with Armin, he couldn’t take her away from her family. 

“Well, yes. But I want to spend some time with you too. I’m just saying, your house will be empty.” 

Eren didn’t say anything; he knew what he _hoped_ she was implying, but he didn’t want to seem like he was pushing her into sex, especially since he wasn’t sure he wanted it yet either. 

Unbeknownst to him, Armin’s thoughts were along similar lines. They hadn’t really talked about it, and while they’d been getting increasingly more sexual with each other, they were reaching the point that Armin wasn’t sure she was ready to pass without having a serious conversation. There was a week left until spring break, and that wasn’t exactly a long time, but she also wasn’t exactly very far from ready to sit on his dick. She’d miss Mikasa, sure, but she wasn’t going to complain about the prospect of fucking loudly in an otherwise empty house, if that was what was in store for them. She didn’t think her own house, with its ever-present Grandpa Arlert and its cycle of three room-renters with wildly different work schedules, was a prime space for covert sexual activity. 

It wasn’t that any neighbouring students cared what they did in their dorm room -- or if they did, they at least weren’t in a position to make Eren and Armin feel bad about it -- but sometimes a little privacy was nice. 

When Eren blinked at her rapidly a few times rather than responding, Armin continued talking albeit a little more rapidly. “I mean, if you don’t mind. You can totally spend spring break alone if you want! But I’d like to see you. We could, um, play video games? Or have a movie marathon?” They’d done a lot of those over the years. “Or, um, maybe… we could… sex?” she finished awkwardly. “You know, like…” She made a gesture with her hands that needs no explanation. 

Eren’s wide eyes opened even wider. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, maybe we could.”

“You sound unsure,” Armin noticed. “I mean, I am too, but that’s kind of why I want to talk about it.”

Eren nodded. “Well, yeah. I guess I’m a little hesitant. I’m just not sure what you’re… okay with, you know?”

“You can touch my dick, Eren. You’ve done it before.” 

Eren laughed nervously. “Yeah, I know that.”

“And I’d want you to fuck me, I think. If you want to.”

“I do. I’m still not sure about… I’ve never, you know, done it in the butt before, so…”

Armin couldn’t help it; she giggled loudly, and it turned into a snort. “Oh, wow, I’m mature…” 

“W-was it really that funny?”

“No. I’m just nervous. I’ve… well, I think you know I haven’t done it either. Not, you know, with someone.” Her cheeks pinked but she held eye contact with Eren. “I’ve done it by myself.”

“Wait, you mean… _yourself_ -yourself?”

Armin’s face went from a light pink to a burning red. She nodded. 

“Like…” He made a sort of twitching motion with two fingers. Armin nodded again. “But wouldn’t that be uncomfortable?”

“It is uncomfortable. Your dick will be too.”

“Well yeah, but isn’t there, um… lubricant?”

Armin got up from her bed and went to her desk; she took a small, mostly-full bottle of the lube she’d bought earlier that week. She had only used it twice so far, but like a trained response her body tingled as soon as her fingers touched the bottle. She tossed it across the room to Eren and he nearly caught it; instead it landed in his lap. 

He stared down at it, and anything else he might have been about to say flew out the window. “Uhh…”

“I like to be prepared,” Armin explained. Not that she really needed to explain anything. One does not need a _reason_ to own lube. 

Eren just sort of gaped at her.

Armin realised she might have broken him. “Oops.”

\---

Eren and Armin went out Sunday afternoon as well. Armin forced him to dress warm for once, and though there weren’t a great many things that a pair of college students could do at no cost in town, they enjoyed walking around for about an hour before the chill of the oncoming sunset started to creep in. 

They headed back towards campus at about four o’clock. At one point, Eren glanced sort of wistfully down a side-street. 

“What’cha thinking about?” Armin asked. 

Eren startled. “Oh. Just, um, it’s Levi’s street.”

“You miss him?”

Eren looked kind of uncomfortable, but he nodded. “I miss you when I’m with him, too. Is that weird?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I kind of wish I could be with both of you, all the time.”

Armin stopped walking, and held tight to Eren’s hand until he stopped as well. “Do you want to see what he’s doing? Call him or something.”

“But I’m with you right now. This is supposed to be our time together.”

Armin turned a harsh glare on Eren; she managed to be reasonably intimidating, despite her naturally adorable features. “I told you, I’m not going to fight with Levi over your attention. If you’re just thinking about him while you’re on a date with me, I’d rather you be with him.”

“I wasn’t thinking about him! Not until now.”

“But now you are thinking about him. So go see him. I’ll come with you; you did say you want to be around both of us.”

After a little more prodding from Armin, Eren finally caved and called. Levi was home, and had just stopped painting for the day; while he was a little confused by the pair wanting to come over his apartment as part of their date, he invited them in anyway. 

“Shoes off,” Levi ordered, before Eren and Armin had even come through the door. They stood there, though, shock-still, until Eren started giggling. “What?”

“Your hair.” Eren pointed at the little ponytail sticking up above Levi’s head, held together by a yellow band. A few strands that weren’t quite long enough were held in place by bobby pins. 

Levi reached his hands up and felt around the top of his head, checking if any of his hair was out of place. “What about it?”

The way Levi’s hands brushed over his hair made the ponytail wiggle, and Eren completely lost it. He doubled over in laughter while Armin covered her face with both hands to hold it in. 

“Fuck you both.” Levi yanked the band out of his hair, and it flopped down messily on either side of his head. A little wave was left by the indent of the tight band on his shower-wet hair, and the bobby pins still held a few strands in place and created, overall, a sort of lumpy mess. 

He turned around and brushed out his hair with his fingers while Eren and Armin composed themselves in the doorway, and then he fetched his extra mugs and poured out two fresh cups of his usual black tea for his guests. They may have laughed at his hair, but Levi was still going to show them some basic hospitality, damn it. 

Levi’s hair was still ruffled when he set down two mugs of tea on his coffee table in front of Eren and Armin, who were by then seated on his couch, but not so much so that it caused another laughing fit. “Let me know if you want milk or sugar or anything.”

Armin sipped her tea first, apparently not concerned that it was still boiling hot. “Do you have honey?”

“I do… Wait, honey in tea?”

Armin shrugged. 

Levi left to get the bear-shaped bottle of honey from his pantry; there was a thin crystallised layer at the top, which showed how little he actually used it, but a little shaking was enough to loosen it. 

Armin squirted just a drop of honey into her cup and swished it around a little to dissolve it, then took another sip. “Mmm, perfect.”

Eren, deciding his had cooled enough, took a gulp of his own tea without adding anything. 

Levi had his own mostly-cooled, half-finished tea from before, slightly over-steeped and mixed with a drop of milk and three packets of sugar; he finished the rest of his mug in one go. 

“So… why are you here, exactly?” Levi asked. 

“We passed by your street,” Eren explained. “Armin asked if I missed you, and, well, I did. So we came.”

“You left out the part where I had to almost beg you to call him,” Armin said. 

“Details.”

“Do you expect me to entertain you?” Levi didn’t have much of anything he could do for them. His home was set up for painting, and little else, because that was really all he ever did. He had a radio… 

“Not at all! I’m happy just being with you.” Eren smiled his sunshine smile. Armin squeezed his hand, and when he turned to her she kissed him. 

Levi cleared his throat, and Armin looked at him sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologise. Just--” Levi stood up from his chair and leaned over the coffee table, planting his own kiss on Eren’s lips. “There. Now we’re even.”

“Even? Yours was longer!”

Levi did a quick, suggestive raise of his eyebrows. 

“Ugh.” Armin grabbed Eren’s chin in one hand and turned his face towards her so she could press their lips together, this time in a long, drawn-out kiss with a little tongue. 

“Not that I’m complaining,” Eren said when Armin released him, “but I thought you didn’t want this to be a competition…”

“I did say that, didn’t I?” Armin leaned back on Levi’s couch. “Sorry.”

Levi circled around the table and dropped himself down into Eren’s lap. “That’s a shame.” He kissed Eren hard, hard enough to make him overbalance and fall back against the empty half of the couch. While Eren recovered, Levi threw a challenging look over his shoulder at Armin. 

“That’s not _fair_!” Armin whined. She drew her legs up onto the couch and rolled onto her knees, reaching out to grab the back of Levi’s shirt. 

“Come on, children, make nice!” Eren said. His face was flushed. “We could all just… non-competitively give me kisses?”

Armin shrugged, and Levi got off of Eren to give him room to sit up, then plopped down on his other side. Levi latched his mouth onto Eren’s neck while Armin took possession of his mouth again. 

Eren made a noise somewhat like a squeal, and both Armin and Levi detached themselves from him. “What’s wrong?” Armin asked. 

“I didn’t think you were actually going to.” Eren reached out for whatever part of each of them was most easily in reach, to stop them from moving away. “But, um, you can.”

Armin kissed Eren again, and she tilted his head to give Levi more room to suck bruises into his neck -- to get him back, or maybe repay him, for what he did to Levi’s entire body Thursday night. 

Eren shoved his hand into Armin’s hair, holding tight because her mouth on his was the only thing holding back his moans. She knew it, and she kind of wanted to hear him, and she _did_ have an idea, but… Armin opened her eyes a bit and saw Levi remove his lips from Eren’s neck. A nasty bite mark and a splotchy purple-red bruise was starting to form, and Levi licked the abused skin lightly. He caught Armin’s eyes and his own crinkled, like he found this whole situation funny. He blew on the wet skin and shook with a suppressed chuckle while Eren shivered. The he tugged at the wide neckline of Eren’s shirt to expose more of his shoulder, and started working another hickey in there. 

So, he wanted to play for a while. Armin could do that. She focussed completely on Eren’s mouth and the feel of his lips swelling against hers.

Eren was, in a word, blissful; though he hadn’t been lying when he said he wanted to be around both of his partners, this wasn’t something he could have imagined. He didn’t even think Armin and Levi liked each other enough to both suck face with him at once, but here he was, between them and barely able to focus on a single thing. Armin’s hair was soft in Eren’s clenched fist, and Levi’s teeth were almost painful in their attack on his collarbone, but then Armin’s lips pressed harder and her tongue swiped against his, and there was a rustling at his side and then Levi’s hand around his wrist, guiding Eren’s hand under his shirt as Armin started to grind lightly down on Eren’s thigh. 

Eren’s head was buzzing. The stretch of Levi’s smooth skin over his chest while he moved blended with the rub of Armin’s thighs against Eren’s. He was pretty sure that the free-box rescue thigh-highs she’d worn under her dress were slipping down, because he couldn’t feel the fabric catching on his jeans any more. Sure enough, when he reached a hand down to the hem of her skirt, he felt only skin from there down to her knees, and then bunched-up cotton. 

Armin’s lips left Eren’s, but Levi replaced her almost immediately, and she slid off the couch and kneeled between Eren’s legs. Her hands went for the button of Eren’s jeans. 

“W-wait--” Eren mumbled around Levi’s eagerly invading tongue. Armin stilled, and Levi drew back; Eren looked between the two of them. “Um…” He looked to Levi. “You, you said no sex.” 

He did, didn’t he? And while he recognised that he really was not the one about to blow Eren, he still had the same unclear reaction to the idea of Eren’s dick being anywhere near him. On the one hand, holy _shit_ did he want it. On the other hand… not yet. 

Sex, and all involved parties being completely ready for it, was not something Levi took lightly. It may have been the first time in a long time that he was anything but full speed ahead for sex, but that little hesitation was enough to stop him, because this time, it wasn’t fear. 

“Suck dick on your own time,” Levi said. “I prefer to tease you.” To exemplify this, as soon as Armin moved out of the way, Levi threw a leg over Eren’s and sort of hovered over his lap. His thighs would start to burn soon from holding the half-kneeling position, but as soon as Eren went back to sucking on his tongue he stopped caring, stopped even paying attention to the light but growing strain in his legs. 

It was a little unfair to Armin that he was taking up all of Eren’s space, but Levi supposed he deserved a little Eren time of his own. He and Armin lived together, after all; they got plenty of each other. Levi rested his arms on Eren’s shoulders and played with his hair, effectively trapping him in a Cage of Levi. Eren grabbed at his hips, fingers pressing in deep just above the low waistband of his jeans, and it almost made Levi want to drop down and grind against him. But no. No, he just clutched Eren closer, kissed him harder, rose up higher on his knees so he was kissing Eren from above. 

Levi could taste something distinctly not-Eren on his tongue; of course, it was Armin, and he realised with a little jolt that he was sort of swapping spit with both of them and he wasn’t really sure how he felt about that. It was less the student thing, and more that Armin was like some sort of innocent, delicate flower he didn’t feel right defiling. 

After a few minutes, Armin maneuvered her way in between them and claimed possession of Eren’s lips once more, in a hungry kiss that appeared to involve at least a bit of biting Eren’s lower lip. She took Eren’s wrists and guided his hands to slide just a little under the hem of her skirt, and Levi remembered she would have sucked Eren off in a strange apartment in front of a professor if he hadn’t stopped her. Maybe she wasn’t as innocent as he thought. 

Armin could also taste a little Levi on Eren, and it was weird, to say the least. It was mostly masked by the bitter aftertaste of tea, but it was there, and sort of… bubblegum? But not like he had chewed gum before they arrived; it wasn’t that strong, and it was sort of… fresher. 

She pulled away and looked at Levi. “Is your toothpaste bubblegum flavoured?” 

Levi glared as best as he could around his kiss-swollen lips and flushed pink cheeks. “Yes.” 

Eren started laughing. Levi stole one more, slightly exasperated kiss to shut him up. 

\---

Armin sneezed in her sleep, effectively ending that sleep with a rather rude awakening. She could feel congestion all up through her nose and forehead. 

Eren made his usual waking-up noises and his arms tightened around her. “You okay?”

“ _No_. I think I caught your cold.”

“From Saturday? What, did you suck it out through my tongue?”

Armin blushed; it actually kind of hurt to have all that blood rushing in with the stuffiness already puffing up her entire face. She hid herself in Eren’s chest. 

An unfamiliar phone alarm rang out loudly, and the pair suddenly realised they were most certainly _not_ in their dorm room when a third person groaned and rolled over, taking part of the blankets with him. 

Levi felt his blankets catch on something on the other side of the bed, and he assumed an intimidating position -- or, as intimidating as he could be with bedhead, raccoon eyes, and a rumpled, oversized shirt with the words “FUCK ME IN THE ASS” on it hanging off one shoulder. Eren and Armin shrieked and clung to each other, and when Levi realised the other occupants of his bed posed no threat, he relaxed. “Oh. It’s just you two.” 

“Why are we still in your room?” Eren asked. 

“You never left.” Levi got out of bed. His choice of pyjama bottoms appeared to be very very tight short-shorts; no-one complained. 

“That doesn’t really answer the question…”

“You wanted cuddles, we all packed in on my bed, and then the two of you fell asleep. Which is rude as hell, I might add; you didn’t even ask if you could stay. I know you both have Anatomy for the Artist first, so you should probably get out of bed.” Levi turned the lights on. “Armin, you look like shit. Take a day off.”

Armin looked around for a mirror, and when she caught her reflection she grimaced. Her hair was a mess, she’d slept in her dress and thoroughly wrinkled it, and her knee-high stockings were down to her calves, but that wasn’t so bad -- what worried her were the bags under her eyes, the bright red nose, and the sickly yellowing of her skin that signified a cold. Her immune system wasn’t as unreasonably over-active as Eren’s, so she knew she’d be riding this one out for a full day at least, not the hour or two Eren had suffered. 

“I think there’s some NyQuil in my medicine cabinet, if you just want to sleep it off.”

“Maybe. I kind of want to shower first.” Armin felt sweaty, and it was probably the fever. “I hope we don’t get you sick.”

Levi leaned out of his bathroom door, holding two medicine bottles in his hands. He tossed the blue one to Armin and held on to the orange one himself. “DayQuil as a preventative measure. If you take the NyQuil now and then use my shower you can just sleep in my bed right after while you’re still warm. I recommend it.” Despite that he’d whined about them staying the night, Levi really didn’t mind that much. 

“I take kind of long showers…”

“Then take Eren with you so you don’t pass out in there.” He set out towels for the two of them and left the room to give them some privacy; he wanted some goddamn tea. 

Armin knocked back the recommended dose of NyQuil and let Eren pull her towards the shower and undress her. She was already starting to feel sleepy by the time the water warmed up, so she sat on the little ledge-seat-thing in Levi’s shower and let her mind float in the clouds while Eren chuckled fondly and washed her with Levi’s soap. He massaged her scalp a little while he shampooed her hair (with Levi’s berry-scented shampoo that Eren was reasonably certain was generally marketed towards women), but he didn’t think she noticed. He towelled her off carefully, helped her into Levi’s enormous, fluffy white bathrobe (with permission), and then tucked her into Levi’s bed with a kiss before stepping back into the shower to wash himself. 

Levi came into the bathroom a few minutes later. “Can I join you? We’re running late.”

“Sure.” Eren slid the shower door open a little and Levi joined him. 

It was far from the first time Eren had seen Levi naked, but he was _so close_. Levi had never gotten a glimpse of Eren before, but now he could see him in his full glory, and while he was no stranger to naked people (or showering with them), there was something unusually intimate about this. 

Eren reached out and, when Levi had very obviously noticed him but didn’t move away, he rested his hands on Levi’s hips, and he leaned down for a kiss, which Levi returned with only a little hesitation. 

He wanted to sleep with Eren, but not yet, and more than that he wanted to be around him, just existing together, learning about each other, maybe some searing kisses every now and then. Levi had heard that was what love was like, but he didn’t think he was in love yet. He could, though. Someday, he thought, he might be able to love the little shit who had steamrolled into his life. 

Levi pressed his hands to either side of Eren’s wet face and tilted his head to slot their lips together fully. He rested his palm against Eren’s neck, over the new hickeys forming there that matched the fading ones on himself. 

In the end, they had to rush towards campus, and they entered the art building from different doors to eliminate any suspicion that they had spent the night together. But it was worth it. And Armin slept soundly in Levi’s apartment until Eren went to wake her up for lunch. He considered bringing her something to eat from the dining hall, but Levi texted him to go get ingredients for chicken noodle soup, he’d pay him back, no arguments, so Eren did that and got to Levi’s apartment at about the same time he did. 

Eren and Levi made soup -- well. Eren made it. Levi boiled water. But they made it, and brought a bowl to a very sleepy and sniffly Armin. 

“Try not to get noodle water all over my sheets,” Levi said, but he handed her a bowl and spoon as soon as she blinked the sleep out of her eyes. 

“Oh! Thank you.” Armin ate slowly, as she was still a little groggy and also not actually sure she was hungry yet, but there was next-level warmth in her hands and, from what little bit she could taste and smell, it was delicious. At least, it was more delicious than her own illness-flavoured saliva. 

Levi ate at his normal speed, but Eren mostly drank his soup right from the bowl at top speed and then had to rush out for class. He kissed Armin’s forehead, and then Levi’s cheek, and then he was gone, leaving his two partners alone together with their soups. 

“So…” Levi said to break the silence. He felt a little awkward, so he tried to go for teasing. “You seemed like you had fun last night.”

“I did.” Armin sneezed; her soup sloshed a little, but none fell out of the bowl, which was a blessing as Levi was watching very carefully for even the smallest drop spilled. 

“Was it… okay? That we were both kissing him, I mean.”

Armin slurped a spoonful of soup while she pondered Levi’s question. “Why wouldn’t it be? We’re both dating him.”

“Yes, but, this isn’t exactly…” He trailed off, trying to find a better word than the one in his head, but he couldn’t. “Normal. Polyamory is normal, of course, but from what I know, unless it’s an actual threesome, we wouldn’t really get involved with each other. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“If you were making me uncomfortable, I’d let you know. Just like you did.” Armin’s kind smile headed off any embarrassment or guilt Levi might have felt for calling off what may have nearly been Eren’s first blowjob. “But, um, poly…amory?”

Levi was confused. He thought Armin had been the one to propose this arrangement, and yet she didn’t know what it was called. “Polyamory is when someone dates more than one person at the same time. Like what Eren’s doing now.”

Armin’s eyes seemed to bug out of her head. “There’s a _word_ for it?” 

“Yes. It’s. Well, I wouldn’t say common, but it’s not unheard of. It happens enough that there’s a word.”

“Holy shit.” Armin set her mostly-eaten soup aside and leaned back on the bed’s headboard. “I mean, I kind of knew it was a thing, but I thought it was only, you know, threesomes. The sexual kind. I didn’t think it extended to dating. Or that it had a _name_.”

On the one hand, Levi wondered if it was rude to relate everything Armin did back to one of her traits; on the other, he couldn’t help but imagine, based on her wide-eyed look of surprise and relief, how she had reacted when she found out what “transgender” meant. 

“You’re thinking something,” Armin said, slicing through Levi’s thoughts. “Tell me.”

“Do you always react this way to finding out there are words for things you’re self-conscious about?” Levi bit his tongue, because that had sounded a _lot_ better in his head than it did when he blurted it out. 

Armin sobered in a flash. She knew exactly what he meant. “No. It depends on the situation. For instance, I found out what it meant to be trans in the same sentence that someone I thought was a friend told me how much he’d like to, as he put it, ‘murder all the trannies.’ So that didn’t end so well. And, um, could you not do that?”

“Do what?”

“Don’t assume everything I do, I do because I’m trans. Even if that _is_ why I’m doing it, it kind of sucks to have people look at me and think ‘oh, she’s doing that because she’s trans, leave her to her weirdo shit.’”

Levi nodded slowly. At age thirty, it was finally time to develop a brain-to-mouth filter, as well as a thought-to-belief filter. 

Armin went back to eating her soup then, and Levi, having nothing left to say when she finished, left to wash both of their bowls. “Shout if you need anything,” he said. “I’ll be painting.” 

Armin fell back asleep soon after. 

She woke when Eren called between his classes, and she told him she felt much better, maybe even good enough to go to work. With the intention to go home, she put on her clothes from the night before and left Levi’s bedroom. 

“Thanks for letting me sleep here,” she said towards the back of Levi’s canvas. His legs were visible, but his upper body was completely hidden by the huge work. 

Levi leaned out enough to see her. “You’re welcome.”

Armin burst into a giggle fit. Levi had his hair tied above his head again in that little ponytail that stuck straight up. He glared at her. “If you’re going to make fun of me, get out.”

“I was leaving. I’m feeling a lot better. I’ll see you around, yeah?”

“Sure. See you.” 

Armin let herself out. 

The apartment suddenly felt too big and too quiet with Eren and Armin gone. When Levi stopped painting a few hours later, he realised he missed them.


	23. Good Old Avoidance Impulse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin’s fifteen minutes of fame. Levi’s five minutes of panic. This has been coming for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: short panic attack. hopefully the last one i’m going to write because i don’t like using panic attacks as a plot point and that’s sort of what they’re becoming. 
> 
> beta'd by remembrance, thank you!

Armin did end up feeling well enough to go to not only her work shift, but also her evening class. Professor Brzenska was strict, more so than most professors, but she stayed on topic and encouraged alternate interpretations of the readings and used Armin’s correct pronouns so, all in all, Armin liked her. She also held an exorbitant amount of office hours, almost five hours a week, and even if Armin didn’t go to them she appreciated that the professor made herself so available to her students, despite that she had just been dragged out of retirement, and for a night class no less. 

As Armin headed out at the end of class, Hitch stopped her. “Hey, cutie! You free around five tomorrow?”

“I’m flattered, but you know I have a boyfriend.” 

Hitch laughed. “Not for a _date_. I do a show on Wall’s radio station. I’d like to have you on, if you want.”

“Oh. Yeah, I’m free.” Armin sniffled; she hoped her cold would be gone completely by then. “What would I be doing?”

“Well, it’s part-interview, part-music, so I’d talk to you about… whatever you want really, for about fifteen minutes, and then you can recommend a few songs for me to work into my set. Sound good?”

\---

There was something thrilling about spending time with Levi, and even more so in his office. Eren’s intentions were pure; he was just drawing Levi while the professor graded, and maybe later Levi might critique his work a little. Technically, this was just extended office hours. They could save the kissing and the touching for someplace more private, especially since the door was open. 

Eren had set up the desktop computer in the office to play the campus radio station; he wanted to listen to Armin’s interview-thing. Though this indie pagan music program in the hour beforehand was pretty cool too. It was great drawing music. Very relaxing. He had completed about half a newsprint pad of mostly gesture drawings, because Levi moved around too much for long poses, but now that Levi had more or less finished grading he was willing to stay still in his cushy spinny office chair while Eren drew him. 

“You’re focussing too much on my face,” Levi said.

Eren looked at Levi’s eyes over the drawing pad balanced on his lap. “You can’t even see my page!”

“I can tell you’re drawing mostly at the top. I have a body, you know, even when it’s covered up.”

Eren pouted. “Can you blame me? You have a nice face, and I’m usually too far away to really draw it.”

Levi broke his pose to turn to Eren, giving him a warning look that told him he was toeing the line between okay and not-okay interactions between a professor and student. Eren mouthed an apology and went back to his drawing, putting more of his concentration towards Levi’s clothing. This meeting was supposed to be more office hours than date, and he needed to put a little more effort into separating the world of teacher-and-student from the world of boyfriends. 

Eren felt the back of his neck prickle and he shivered. He looked up from Levi’s shirt pocket, which he’d been drawing, to see Levi’s eyes on him. More accurately, Levi was eye-fucking him, a far cry from the slight glare Eren had last seen on him. As soon as Eren caught him, he looked away, but the lust remained in his eyes. 

Yeah, they _both_ needed to put more effort in. 

Eren tried to focus on the fold of his shirt collar, but he was easily distracted by the faded yellow bruises on his neck, and the little greenish dots that had once been bites. And if he looked close to the shirt, he saw a little S-shape at a seam, the kind of twist in the fabric that happened when one ironed in a rush. That didn’t seem like Levi at all. The tiny snag seemed so out-of-place on the crisp white fabric that Eren had half a mind to reach out and rub at it until it straightened. But he was also pretty certain he’d just end up wrinkling Levi’s whole collar if he did that.

DJ Lune signed off her show, and played her required two ads per hour while she switched control over to the next host. Hitch’s sing-song-y greeting rang out much louder than the low-key rhythms of ritual music, and it managed to distract Eren from his scrutiny of Levi’s left-over bruises and very slightly wrinkled clothing. 

“ _Good e~vening! This is DJ Chell, and I’m here with a friend of mine, Armin. Say hi!_ ”

“ _Hello!_ ”

“There she is!” Eren shouted. He abandoned his drawing and leaned on Levi’s desk to get closer to his speakers. 

“Inside voice,” Levi chastised. 

Eren shushed him. 

“ _Armin’s here to talk about her biggest dream, is that right?_ ”

“ _Yeah. Ever since I was little, I’ve wanted to live by the ocean._ ” 

The speakers crackled a little. “ _Ooh, tell me more._ ” 

“ _My parents were marine biologists so we had lots of books about the ocean, and I used to read them constantly. I was fascinated by it; not in the academic way that Mom and Dad were, but more loving. They were professors, and all their research was either at the college or at home, so I never got too see the ocean until after they died, but I always knew that was what I wanted._ ”

“ _What was it that fascinated you so much?_ ”

“ _Oh… everything. I think what caught my interest first was that it’s so big; it was more than I could really imagine, as a little kid from a little town in a valley. The biggest bodies of water I had ever seen were these lakes nearby and they weren’t all that big, you could see the other side from the shore, so the idea that most of the world is covered in water, and we aren’t totally certain how deep it all goes, was sort of mind-blowing to my little brain. It still is._ ”

Eren remembered Armin’s look of wonder every time she opened a new one of her parents books. Half the time the language was beyond her comprehension, and she’d spend hours asking her grandfather to explain, and she’d sit there mesmerised while Eren looked on, only retaining maybe half of the information but still thoroughly enthused because it made Armin so damn happy. 

“ _I used to read a lot of high fantasy novels as a kid, too, and a lot of them made a big deal about salt being incredibly expensive and rare; I thought it was that way in my world, and I always thought my family was super-rich because we had salt on the table every night. So imagine my surprise when I found out the ocean is full of salt water, so much of it that it’ll never run out._ ”

On the radio, Hitch laughed and made a few of her own comments; in Levi’s office, Eren, starry-eyed, sighed loudly enough to drown her out. He loved few things more than Armin talking about her ocean dreams. 

“ _I find a lot of deep-sea creatures pretty terrifying, but also fascinating. They all look so different from anything I’m used to seeing up here, which makes sense because it’s a totally different environment, but it’s still really shocking to see some of the stuff that lives down there. And when I say ‘down there’ I don’t even mean the deepest parts of the ocean. Once you get down to about where there’s 10% sunlight left, animals already look pretty scary._ ”

“ _And you want to live there…_ ”

“ _Well it’s not like I want to live in the Marianas Trench!_ ” They both laughed. “ _I just want to live by the seaside._ ”

“ _Have fun navigating seafront property prices._ ” Hitch laughed again. 

“ _Oh, I know. But I think it’s worth it. And I won’t be alone. Eren, he’s my boyfriend, and he’s been my best friend pretty much since we were born… He sort of shares the dream with me, you know? We’ve always planned to go together. We actually went to the beach together our first time._ ”

“ _Aww! How cute!_ ”

“ _I guess so._ ” In the short silence that followed, Eren could practically feel Armin’s shrug through the Wi-Fi and online radio player that connected them. 

“ _You said your interest in the ocean isn’t academic. How would you describe it? Aesthetic?_ ” Hitch asked. 

“ _Not aesthetic. Well, a little bit. It’s very pretty. I think I have more of a curious interest, or maybe, um, fanatical? I want to know everything I can, but it’s for me, you know? Not for the pursuit of knowledge. I just love it. I’m a history major for the sake of academia, but I love the ocean for my own sake. Does that make sense?_ ”

“ _You would never want to major in Marine Studies, yeah?_ ”

“ _No, I think that would ruin the whole experience for me. It’s like how reading on your own time is fun, but reading for school is a chore._ ”

“ _Oh yeah, I know that feeling. We’re coming up on the quarter-point of the show, so do you have anything else you want to say before we switch to music?_ ”

“ _I’m good. Thanks for having me!_ ”

“ _Thank you for coming! Today’s playlist was a joint effort between Armin and myself; the first song is Armin’s choice, and it’s by Queen._ ”

‘You’re My Best Friend’ played, and Eren’s hypnotised smile turned into a full-blown grin. “She remembered!”

“Remembered what?” Levi asked. 

“It’s our song!” Eren started to sing along quietly, and Levi leaned back in his chair and listened. 

It was the first time he’d heard Eren sing -- not surprising, as he hadn’t known him all that long -- but he’d known the guy probably had some talent for it if he tried out for a musical. And he was right. Eren wasn’t putting a lot of effort in, so it wasn’t his Best Singing Ever, but it was nice to listen to. He had the right kind of voice for Queen, too, so Levi didn’t feel the urge to smack him for daring to make noise over Freddie Mercury. 

“You’ve got a good voice,” Levi said during a break in the lyrics. 

“Thanks. You should hear Armin. She’s _amazing_.” He went back into the song with a little more gusto after the compliment, and sang along quietly to later songs that he recognised. At the end of the show, he asked Levi, “Do you sing?”

“No, and be glad I don’t.” 

“I’m sure it’s not that bad. You have a nice speaking voice.”

Levi had no misgivings about his ability to carry a tune; namely, that he had none. “It doesn’t translate well. I sound like a cat in a blender.”

“Oh, come on. It can’t be that bad.”

Oh, but it could. To demonstrate, Levi gave an example. “ _I believe I can fly…_ ”

“Ohmygodno.”

“ _I believe I can touch the sky_.”

“Nope.”

Levi got louder, and by extension worse. “ _I think about it every night and day_!”

“Please stop!”

“ _Spread my wings and fly away!_ ” He screeched a little. It wasn’t even on purpose. That was just how he sounded. 

Another professor shouted “Shut up!” across the hall, and Levi finally, blessedly, stopped. 

Eren clutched at his chest, his eyes watering slightly. “That hurt my soul.”

“That’s what you get for insisting I can sing.”

He gave Levi an apologetic look and blinked away his fake tears. “In a way, it was kind of nice, though. Not your voice!” Eren backtracked a little. “But, you know, seeing you come out of your shell a little. I can tell you hold yourself back a lot, but you don’t have to all the time.”

Their conversation was veering dangerously towards familiarity again, and Levi wanted to get it back on track, but… He hummed quietly, and it could imply agreement or dissent, but he wrote _I come out of my shell around people I’m comfortable with_ on the top sheet of a pad of Post-Its and slid it towards Eren. 

It made his hands feel a little dirty to be sneaking around this relationship, and Eren’s grateful, sort of surprised smile didn’t make the feeling go away. If anything, that made it worse. 

And it was like lying, telling Eren he was comfortable -- and Levi _was_ comfortable around him, more than he really should be, but that was just it. He shouldn’t be comfortable, and that knowledge alone was what made him question every choice he’d made. There was something wrong with their relationship. There were a lot of things wrong with it, in fact, but Levi was willing to push all that aside to be a part of Eren’s life. 

That wasn’t healthy, was it? 

Eren looked to Levi with concern. “You okay?” he asked, and it was partially drowned out by the next office’s door opening. Levi shook his head ‘no’, but before he could say anything, someone knocked against his own open door. 

“Afternoon, Levi.” Hannes smiled at him genuinely, but Levi felt sick and he was pretty sure it showed. “Eren! I thought I heard your voice.”

Eren greeted his advisor with a “Hi, Professor Hannes!” His face was turned towards Hannes, but his body remained mostly facing Levi. He assumed this would be a short hello-see-you-later. 

He was wrong. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, actually. I don’t want to take you from office hours, though.”

“He hasn’t drawn a thing for fifteen minutes,” Levi said. Eren turned to look at him, questioning, but Levi just nodded at him, indicating he should leave. “Thanks for coming by, Eren.” His arms unfolded and he rubbed his palms against his pants once before jamming his hands in his pockets. 

Eren stood and started to pack up his things. “Yeah, no problem. Thanks for your help.” He still looked confused, and he _was_ confused. Hadn’t Levi just been about to say something was wrong…? And he was doing the hands-in-pockets thing that he only did when he was nervous. Eren didn’t want to leave him like this. He at least had to come back after this conversation, whatever it was. He left his backpack and his big canvas portfolio full of sketch pads by Levi’s desk to show he would return. 

“Let’s take a walk, yeah?” Hannes suggested. The hand on Eren’s shoulder when he reached the door indicated it was more of a demand. 

Eren looked back over his shoulder at Levi, feeling kind of like a little kid who’d just gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Levi felt the same, with an accompanying slight roll of nausea. “Yeah, sure…”

And then Eren was gone. 

Levi got up and closed the door after them, and then he went back to his desk, sat down in his cushy rolly chair, and led his head fall onto his desk with a loud thump. “Fuck.” He knew this could only mean one thing; Hannes had heard too much of their conversation, had figured them out, and was about to try and get the truth out of Eren about their relationship. Either Eren would lie, and Levi felt another wave of nausea at the idea that Eren would feel like he had to lie to protect what they had, or Eren would tell the truth -- and he _should_ , whether out of pride or the virtue of honesty or the fact that Levi was probably a huge creep, but that would mean the end of them, wouldn’t it? 

He should have known better. Fuck it, he _did_ know better, and he should have never started this in the first place. He was supposed to be the responsible one; older, self-supporting, a _teacher_ for god’s sake. He wasn’t supposed to get involved with _children_. 

They were eleven years apart in age. Eren may have said he didn’t care, but that was a pretty big gap, especially for someone who was only nineteen to start with. What was that rule… half your age plus seven? Something like that. Eren was too young, Levi was too old. 

So why the everloving fuck did Levi feel so damn _comfortable_?

\---

Once they were outside, Eren braced for the cold, but it wasn’t so bad. Or maybe he couldn’t tell past the cold of low-level nervousness. Hannes wasn’t smiling like he had been inside, and that in itself was concerning. Hannes always smiled. 

“You’re pretty close to Professor Ackerman.”

It took Eren a moment to realise he meant Levi. He knew Levi’s last name of course, but it was still weird to think of anyone but Mikasa having that name. “I guess so.”

“He seems rather comfortable around you.”

Eren tried very hard not to smile with pride. “Yeah.” He suddenly knew where this was going, and such a serious conversation required a little more tact than Eren was used to. As much as he just wanted it to not happen, he also knew it would be best to just get it over with. Rip it off like a band-aid, right? 

Hannes sighed. “A few of your professors have expressed worry that you might be too close.”

“What’s your point?” There wasn’t any use denying it, and even if there was, Eren didn’t feel ashamed. And really, he knew they were only trying to help. Yeah, Levi could get in trouble if they were found out, and Eren certainly didn’t want that, but he didn’t think lying would protect him. Hannes would still be suspicious, and if Eren lied it would seem like he had something to hide. He didn’t see anything wrong with what he was doing, and he wasn’t about to let anyone else ruin what he and Levi had with misconceptions about what they meant to each other. 

Or, at least, what Eren hoped they meant to each other. 

“My point,” Hannes said, choosing his words carefully, “is that we’re concerned you might be in a sexual relationship with him. I want to make sure he’s not taking advantage of you.”

“He’s not. I get why you’re concerned, and I appreciate it, but I can tell you he’s not taking advantage of me at all. And we’re really not that sexual. He doesn’t seem to want to. I’ve done more with my girlfriend.” O-kay, that might be a little too much information. Eren bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying anything more. 

Hannes was visibly uncomfortable, but he persevered for the sake of his advisee. “So you’re cheating on your girlfriend with a prof--”

“No!” Eren interrupted. “No, not at all! I would never do that to Armin. No, we’re, you see, we’re poly-- polyamorous, I think that’s the word.” Armin had just told it to him the night before, with a smile on her face like it was the most beautiful secret she’d ever shared. “Well, I am. I’m dating both of them, and they know about it, and they’re fine with it. They’re actually really happy about it. Armin thinks I’m, like, meant to love everyone in the world, and Levi, I think, likes that I’m not limiting myself to someone so much older than me. Not that I think it’s limiting. I’m happy with them both.”

Hannes didn’t want to argue with the sincerity in Eren’s eyes, but… “That does abate my concerns a bit, but I’d still like to keep track of how you and Levi are getting on. I don’t want to seem invasive. You’re an adult and you’re capable of making your own decisions. It may be within school policy for a professor to date a student who they’re not directly grading, but it’s still a concern and I don’t want you to get hurt if I can stop it.”

“Thanks, Hannes. I’ll keep that in mind.” Eren wasn’t used to seeing Hannes so serious, but it was a serious matter. If it was anyone else, like one of his friends, Eren would probably be the one interrogating them about their relationship, so he understood. He was grateful, even if it wasn’t necessary. He looked back towards the Art building. They’d made about half a circuit around the lawn behind the museum. “Can I go now? I think Levi’s having a massive freak-out and I don’t want to leave him alone too long.”

“Go ahead.”

“Thanks! See you around.” Eren ran off. 

He made it back to Levi’s office in record time and stumbled his way in. Levi was still leaning on his desk, and he shifted just enough to look at his door with one eye before returning to his previous position. “I guess you’re here to tell me it’s over?”

“Nope! I’m here to help you calm down, and then I’ve got good news.” Eren took Levi by the shoulders and moved him into a sitting position. He held Levi’s hands and started counting out even breaths for him. 

“How are you so good at this?” Levi asked. He could feel his racing heart slow down already. 

Eren knew it was mostly a rhetorical question, but he had an answer and he wanted Levi to hear it. “Part of it is knowing what to do. Part of it is probably how comfortable you are with me.” 

Levi smiled, just a tiny one, but it meant the world to Eren. He was glad he’d closed the door when he came in, because it meant he could brush Levi’s hair out of his face and give him a short kiss. “I do wonder though… what do you do when I’m not around to help?”

“I don’t flip my shit like this all that often, but I deal with it sort of how you do. Sit down, count my breaths, focus on something that isn’t the feeling of choking… It takes longer when I’m alone, and I think that’s true for most people, but I do it. I was already trying before you came back.”

“Oh, good. I was worried about what would happen while I’m away for spring break.”

Ah. Right. That was coming up. Eren wouldn’t be around for a whole week. That was… probably good for them, actually. They could use some time apart. But… Levi didn’t really want to think about that quite yet. Ahh, good old avoidance impulse. “You had good news?” he asked. 

“Yeah! Hannes said he wants to keep track of us, make sure you’re not taking advantage of me and all that, but there’s no rule against us being together so it’s fine. I’m here to stay.” 

“That’s… that’s good. That’s actually really good.” Levi hesitated before saying the next bit, but he knew honesty, as well as actually talking to Eren about his problems in the first place, would be important to both of them. “It doesn’t make this right, exactly; I’m still a lot older than you, but I’m a little more comfortable knowing there are more people looking out for you.”

“You keep talking like you’re worried you’re going to hurt me. Do you think of yourself as some sort of monster?”

“Sometimes,” Levi admitted. How could he not? 

“Well then I must be a monster, too. I’ve done worse, remember?”

Levi looked down at their linked hands, and at the little sliver of Eren’s knife tattoo he could see on his wrist. “You still haven’t told me that story.”

“I will. Someday.”

Levi stood up, hoping he could steal another kiss, and found he was still a head shorter than Eren leaning on his desk. He settled for tucking his head under Eren’s chin and wrapping his arms around Eren’s waist, and he sighed when he felt Eren’s arms come around him as well. 

“Touchy-feely today?” Eren teased. 

“Shut up.”

“I’m not judging. I like it.”

Levi tightened his hold on Eren, burrowing closer into his warmth. “You better.”


	24. The Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's another side-story coming relatively soon. it'll be longer than previous ones, and multi-chaptered, covering Sasha and Mikasa's spring break road trip.
> 
> warnings for this chapter: threats of violence, off-screen blowjob, recreational drug use, piercings in sensitive areas, party games, vague descriptions of paintings involving body horror, mentions of past drug addiction
> 
> beta'd by remembrance

Levi took lunch in his office on Wednesday, expecting Hannes to show up and lecture him. He wasn’t looking forward to it, and he’d surely berate the man for interfering in his private affairs, which would only make things worse, but honestly he appreciated that Hannes cared so much about Eren and wanted to protect him. Eren sure as hell didn’t feel the need to protect himself. 

Instead, he got Mikasa. 

“You’re dating my brother.” 

She was blunt, and Levi appreciated that. “I am.”

“If you hurt him, I will cut off your testicles, deep-fry them, and feed them to you. Not necessarily in that order.”

Levi suppressed the urge to gag; he’d seen worse done to people for lesser crimes. He was a devoted fan of horror movies with both tasteful and untasteful gore, where one could watch people get torn to shreds without flinching… but, you know, when it’s _your balls_ on the line, it’s a little different. He was also absolutely sure she would do it. “I’m sure that’s only the least of what I’d deserve.”

“You’re damn right it is. Eren deserves the best, and you better be prepared to give that to him.” Mikasa managed to look positively murderous with a neutral expression. 

There weren’t many fights Levi would back down from, but in that moment, he didn’t want to fight her. Not if she had Eren to protect. Levi briefly and with a fleeting thrill of terror remembered they shared a last name and wondered if he actually was related to her. 

“I hope you don’t expect me to lie to you. I can’t promise anything. He does deserve the best, but I don’t know that I can give him that. I’m selfish and I like his attention and I like him, so I’ll keep him around as long as he wants to stay. If I can’t give him the best…” He shrugged, as if it was no big deal. They both knew better. “If I can’t give him the best, I’ll get you the fryer myself.”

“Do you think that will impress me?” 

“No.”

It did, though. She’d never admit it, but it did. Mikasa hadn’t expected so much honesty from Levi. She’d expected obstinate lies, a defensive attitude… Even if she knew before coming in here that Levi really did care about her brother, she didn’t expect him to so readily admit there might be something not entirely morally sound about their relationship, or that if anyone was at fault, it was clearly Levi. At least, not to her face. 

Still, she pressed on. “You’re old.”

“Thirty is hardly _old_ , but I’m a lot older than Eren, yes.”

“And you’re a professor.”

“I am. I know it’s fucked up.”

“You could easily take advantage of him. How am I supposed to trust you?”

“I don’t expect you to.”

“So why are you with him?”

 _Because I like him,_ Levi thought. He’d already said that, but that wasn’t all. _I like him more than I’ve liked anyone else I’ve dated. He makes me happy, and there aren’t a lot of things that do that. We… we work. We fit. Somehow._

“Well?”

Levi still didn’t answer. He couldn’t come up with a damn thing that wasn’t sappy and cheesy and way too sweet to sound like anything but bullshit -- even though it was all true. 

“Do you love him?” She had hesitated asking. She hoped it would come up. Mikasa wasn’t sure if she was more afraid that he would say yes, or that he would say no. What did he know about loving Eren? And yet, how could he not? 

More importantly, would he try to justify his actions with his love?

“No.” That much was certain. Maybe someday he could feel that way; if anyone could, it would probably be some shitty ball of hopeful optimism and headstrong justice like Eren. But at this point, Levi couldn’t honestly say he loved him. He was just… “I’m comfortable around him.” It sounded just as cheesy as anything else, but maybe a little less bullshit. Eren, at least, had appreciated it. 

“You shouldn’t be.” Mikasa knew she was being harsh, but she had to be. She had to, for Eren. 

“I know. I told him all of this, and he convinced me to go for it anyway. I’m not going to regret it before it even happens if I don’t have a reason to.”

“Good.”

“Hm?” 

“You’re grateful to have him in your life. I can tell. Maybe it’s the least I can ask of you, but it’s enough to make me trust you.” Mikasa stepped forward and held out a hand. “Welcome to the family.”

“What?” It couldn’t be that easy, it just couldn’t. 

“I already knew how you felt. I already trusted you, really. I just had a responsibility to Eren, and so I had to threaten you a little.” Mikasa waved her proffered hand a little. “Shake, boy,” she said, like she was talking to a dog.

Levi shook her hand. He expected it to feel like a death sentence, but it was actually rather pleasant. Her strong grip reminded him of Hanji’s, as did the calluses on her fingertips. The dull fire in her eyes kind of reminded him of Erwin, which was disconcerting, but also of Eren, which was a little better. Eren’s fire was blazing, though; shining like the sun and hot like the middle of summer. Mikasa’s was more like the burn of ice. A cold sting. The cold edge of a blade pressed against skin, against the rapid thrum of a heartbeat -- 

Oh. She reminded Levi of himself. That was why he was so readily honest with her. He respected her. He feared her. 

Maybe that was also why she trusted him. She saw herself in him too; her fiercely protective nature, her cold steel eyes, her guarded expression, her strength… they were all the same in him. He was just an asshole to top it all off, while she was… 

What was she? He wanted to say a soldier, but no. Something else. Something more selfless. 

Mikasa squeezed his hand hard, pulling him from his thoughts. “Seriously, though. Don’t hurt him. I meant what I said about your testicles. My friend has all-hours access to the culinary arts centre and she’s been itching to test out the fryers.”

\---

Armin was studying, laying on her bed in a t-shirt and underwear. Which, okay, it was a _little_ unusual for her, but she’d been wearing those tight jeans all day so she probably just wanted to get comfortable. Eren kept packing, because if he saved this for the last minute he’d probably forget half of what he needed to bring home. It was already kind of late. 

Shirts? Check. 

Pants? Check. 

Socks? Check. 

Underwear? Check. 

_Sexy_ underwear? Um… Not check. “Where the fuck did I put them?” He was pretty sure they were marketed as unisex underwear, which had once been a concept that baffled Eren, but since coming to Wall College he had quickly come to understand that any clothing, even underwear, could be worn by anyone. 

He was also pretty sure that lesson had come more from wearing Mikasa’s bra to Convocation than anything else. 

“What are you looking for?” Armin asked. 

“Underwear. Red. Kind of small and stretchy.” Come to think of it, Armin _was_ wearing red… 

“Oh, these?” Armin moved her textbook out of the way; she was, indeed, wearing Eren’s sexy underwear. “I thought they were mine, sorry.”

He wasn’t buying it. “Armin.”

“Okay, okay, I was trying to seduce you again.” She stood and struck a pose, one hand in her hair and the other rucking up her shirt. “Is it working?”

“What’s gotten into you?” Eren asked. He moved closer and wrapped his arms around her. It was totally a ‘yes’. 

“Not you. Yet.” 

“I thought we were saving that for home.”

“Oh, we are… but I owe you a blowjob, don’t I?” Her hands trailed over his hips and into his waistband, and all thoughts of packing went out the window. 

\---

An orgasm and a shared shower later, Sasha knocked on their door. Eren had just retrieved his sexy underwear from Armin’s clutches, and he stuffed it into his suitcase before answering. 

“We’re going into the forest. Wanna join?” she asked. Mikasa was behind her, and she had her backpack over one shoulder. 

Eren considered it. It was nearly eleven on Thursday, right before break, and Anatomy for the Artist was cancelled the next day so he wouldn’t have to get up until noon. Perfect timing. “I’m down. Armin?” 

She agreed as well, and they grabbed sweatshirts (it had, in fact, warmed up significantly that day, so that was probably all they needed) and set out. 

“I should let you know, ‘we’ means Connie and Jean, too,” Sasha informed. “Oh, and, um, we’ll be smoking.”

“That’s fine,” Armin assured. 

“I don’t mean cigarettes.”

“I figured.” 

Sasha sighed in relief. “Do you guys want any? Connie said he had enough to share.”

Armin declined, and Eren considered it for a moment but in the end declined as well. “I’m surprised you’re coming on this adventure,” he said to Mikasa. 

“I was curious. I want to know what it’s like.” She hefted her backpack up a little higher on her shoulder. “Also, I’ve got the snacks.”

“Snacks are _very_ important,” Sasha stressed. Her eyes blazed and she looked more intensely serious than two-thirds of her present friends had ever seen her. “Never get high without snacks. You _will_ regret it.”

Eren chuckled. “Noted.”

They made a trip into the forest by the pond, past the main path and into lightly-treaded underbrush, far enough in that they wouldn’t be seen or heard but still close enough to the campus proper that they could see the lights of dorm rooms through the trees. Connie and Jean were already settled in under a little hide-away. It was covered by small branches arranged in a curved wall that was sturdier than it looked, reinforced with pond weeds and strips of fabric tied around criss-crossing twigs. A small flashlight was hung on one of the branches over their heads, and Connie was carefully arranging a little set-up; a small candle in a jar, a thin stick of incense, a few bottles of water, and his dearly beloved purple glass pipe. 

Mikasa set down her backpack and started removing an assortment of junk foods; Goldfish, Slim-Jims, mini-donuts, Fig Newtons, Oreos, and the golden fruit of life itself --

“Taquitos, fuck yeah!” Connie shouted, reaching for one of the recently microwaved tubes of cheesy pre-frozen wonderfulness. He shoved half of it in his mouth. “Mmmmm, soooo goooooooood!!!” He actually moaned around the second bite (read: second half). 

Jean commandeered the entire package of Fig Newtons, hugging them tightly against his chest. “Mine.”

“Hey, don’t hog them!” Eren whined. 

“Do _you_ want them?” Jean asked. Eren shook his head. “Does anyone else want Fig Newtons?” No-one did. Jean smugly ripped into the package and stuffed one in his mouth. 

Connie passed around the pipe and a lighter while Eren and Armin cracked open a couple of water bottles. Mikasa coughed once and then suppressed it with watering eyes, but Jean hacked like he was choking. Eren laughed at him mercilessly; Armin passed him water, which he drank greedily. 

When he’d downed half the bottle, he decided to defend himself. “Shut up, there was ash in there.” Jean sulked. Connie inspected the bowl, and gave him a look that clearly called his bullshit. 

When everyone was at their preferred level of intoxication, Connie lit the incense and candle and turned off the overhead flashlight. The moon, nearly full, provided more than enough light for their cozy little hidey-hole. 

“So what now?” Eren asked, around a mouthful of Goldfish. 

“Now,” Sasha answered, “we play never-have-I-ever and eat all the food.” She held up her hands in front of her, fingers outstretched, and everyone else did the same. “Clap and put a finger down if you’ve done it; if you’re the only one who claps, you have to tell the story. Never have I ever fallen asleep in the forest.”

Connie elbowed her, clapped his hands, and put a finger down. “It’s too early to break out the low blows. I was high, stayed out too long, was by myself. Sasha left in search of more food. Not that interesting, except I got rained on. Never have I ever slept in class.” Everyone else put a finger down. 

Eren was next. “Never been out of the country.” Jean and Mikasa put a finger down. 

“Never have I ever called the wrong number,” Armin put forth, and everyone put a finger down and groaned loudly. 

“I’ve never worn a condom,” Jean said. He had to be the one to start the sex things. 

Only Eren clapped. “Goddamnit. I slept with a girl over the summer.” He stuffed a mini-donut in his mouth while everyone else “Oooooooh”ed and his cheeks turned red. 

Mikasa thought she may as well get it out of the way: “Never have I ever sucked a dick.”

Armin clapped, and it seemed to echo, so she didn’t realise at first that she was the only one. Her eyes widened, and she looked around frantically, eyes falling on Jean. “Wait, you haven’t?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh.” Everyone stared at her expectantly. “I-- damn. It was Eren. Like, an hour ago.” Her face got impossibly redder. 

“She’s good,” Eren offered. Armin shoved him. “Ow! Wait, shit, I forgot how many fingers I had up.”

“You had seven,” Connie said. 

“Never have I ever been to New York City,” Sasha said. All but herself and Connie were struck down by the Big Apple. 

“Nice.” Connie high-fived her. “Never been to Massachusetts before college.” 

Jean clapped. “My family lives in Boston.”

“Never have I ever been to California,” Eren said, glaring at Sasha and Connie. They both clapped. 

“Not fair,” Sasha said. “You know we’re from there.”

“And you know we’re from New York,” Eren shot back. 

Armin cut into their argument. “Never have I ever slept with a girl.”

Eren, alone once more, clapped. Everyone looked at him expectantly. “Oh, come on, you all know I’m doing stuff with Armin.”

“What kiiiind of stuff?” Sasha asked. 

“You’re asexual!” Eren shouted. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m curious! Just because I don’t want to do the thing doesn’t mean I can’t know about you doing the thing. I mean, you’re here, not getting high, right?”

“Fine! I mean, you know she blew me today. I also, you know, gave her a handjob before. And there’s been other stuff.”

“Other stuff?”

“No butt stuff,” Armin supplied helpfully. “Yet.”

“How about the girl over the summer?”

Eren made a face. “That was a bad idea. It was just, you know, kind of boring sex. Neither of us even came. I’m pretty sure she’s a lesbian, so that might explain her side; I was kind of freaked out by the squeaky condom noises.”

“Or you’re bad at sex,” Jean suggested. 

“I tried really hard! I did, like, all the things guys are told to do to make girls feel good. I even asked if she wanted me to eat her out, but she said no.” He groaned. “Can someone else say something please? Asshole, it’s your turn.” He gestured at Jean. 

“Fine, douchebag. I’ve never seen the fifth Harry Potter movie.”

Everyone but Eren put a finger down. 

“It’s okay,” Armin said. “That one sucked. You didn’t miss much.”

“Never have I ever watched Spongebob,” Mikasa said. Everyone put a finger down. 

Sasha made a face as she contemplated her next move. “Ummm… Never have I-- nope, I’ve done that. Um. Never have I ever owned a camera that wasn’t also a phone.” Everyone but Connie put a finger down. 

“Never have I ever watched porn,” Connie said. 

“Does _Orange is the New Black_ count?” Mikasa asked. She was the only one who hadn’t put a finger down. 

“Yes,” everyone responded, mostly to knock her down a peg. 

“This is going to be over way too fast,” Eren said. “But fuck it. Never have I ever worn leather.” Jean scowled and put a finger down. Mikasa put one down with more grace. 

“Ooh, Jean’s got one left,” Armin noticed. “Are we doing dares for the loser?”

“I didn’t know that was a thing,” Sasha said, “but we totally should.”

“Nice. Never have I ever gotten a nipple piercing.” 

“Fuck!” Jean swore, and his loud clap and shout nearly drowned out Sasha. “Wait, you too?”

Sasha nodded. “There were those coupons to Holes last semester, and I wanted it.” She shrugged. “So now we have to give you a dare.”

“Usually the dares are supposed to be based on the one you got out on.” Armin grinned, and she looked kind of evil in the dark and candlelight. 

“Dick piercing!” Eren shouted.

Jean sucked in a deep breath, and Connie was about to say he didn’t have to, but he agreed. “Fine. I kind of was curious about it, anyway. But if I don’t like it, I can take it out, right?”

Eren waved a hand. “Yeah, whatever.”

“Done.”

“Let’s keep going, though. This is fun.”

“Never have I ever skipped rehearsal,” Mikasa said, looking sternly at Sasha.

She clapped sheepishly. “I had a lot of homework!”

“You said you were sick.”

“I was sick! After I ate fifteen of my biscuits…”

Mikasa sighed loudly, and fondly. Sasha was a food-obsessed freak of nature… but she was Mikasa’s favourite food-obsessed freak of nature. 

“Never have I ever thrown up from eating too much!” Sasha shouted proudly. Armin and Eren put a finger down, remembering their ill-advised attempt at a hot dog eating contest. Connie also did the thing. 

“Never have I ever dyed my hair,” Connie said. Everyone put a finger down. 

“I’m out,” Eren announced. 

Everyone then agreed that, having got both of the argumentative nuisances out, they could all agree to move on from high school party games. 

Despite that -- or because of it? -- they stayed out well past midnight, talking about whatever the fuck came to mind. Jean, who got extra-talkative and kind of forcefully honest when he was tired and intoxicated, eventually blurted out in an only tangentially related conversation that he liked being held down and blindfolded while getting fucked hard. Eren was disgusted. Armin agreed that it kind of sounded nice. Eren, who got more cuddly when he was tired, promptly filed away that information for later and pulled Armin into his lap for smooches. She went along happily, until Sasha whined at them that they weren’t allowed to have sex in the sacred weed hut. They weren’t even close to it, but they split apart for the time being, but still huddled close together because it was getting chilly out. 

“Oh man, it’s after two,” Connie said, checking his phone. Its light was slightly blinding. “We should head back.”

“I want Taco Bell,” Sasha shouted, a little too loudly.

“Shit. We let her stay out too long.” Connie looked terrified. 

“Hey Jean! Are you good to drive?” 

“Let’s go. Once she gets on her Taco Bell rant it’s almost impossible to get her out of it. I’ve got to stuff her with mac ‘n’ cheese, stat.” Connie started cleaning up. 

“I don’t want mac ‘n’ cheese. I want Taco Bell. Armin, do you want Taco Bell?” Sasha leaned across the area that Connie was trying to clean, getting up in Armin’s face. “Oh wait, am I too close?” She moved back a little. “Okay. Better. I know you want Taco Bell.” 

Armin stammered a little, “I-I’m good without, actually.”

“Awwwww…” 

“We can get you Taco Bell in the morning, Sash.” Connie tried to get her out of the way; her hair was dangerously close to the candle, and he couldn’t get close enough to blow it out. 

She moved back to her seat. “You always say that, and then we never get Taco Bell. I want it now!”

“How about I bake you a potato?”

Sasha’s eyes brightened. “Oh! Can we make loaded potato skins?”

“Sure, Sasha.”

“With bacon?”

“Yeah.”

“And sour cream?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Yay!” She happily helped with cleanup. 

By the time they’d put everything away and made their trek out of the forest, Sasha was half-asleep, propped up by Mikasa. 

\---

Waking up in someone’s arms was addictive, plain and simple. Eren just couldn’t get used to it, but in a good way. He’d stir to the sound of his alarm, and immediately get Armin blearily blinking sleep out of her eyes and smiling at him, kissing him good morning, burrowing in closer when he hit ‘snooze’. Then at night they’d go to sleep together, and fall into unconsciousness slowly and calmly with the background noise of each other’s breathing, Armin’s head on Eren’s chest and her soft hair tickling his chin. And then morning would come once more… 

On this particular morning, Armin whined at the sound of the 8 AM alarm that she’d forgotten to turn off. She swiped Eren’s phone and set another alarm for noon, just in time for lunch. 

Eren didn’t remember going to sleep naked, but he got an eyeful of Armin’s everything while she stretched out to put the phone back on the windowsill. She felt the nudge of his morning wood turning into an actual erection, and responded only with “down, boy” before snuggling in close for a few more hours of sleep. Eren was too tired to even consider attempting to change her mind. 

They next awoke to the same sound, a phone alarm, but later in the day. It was accompanied by the wonderful smell of food wafting up from the dining hall. Smiles and kisses were shared. Cute wake-up stretch noises ensued. Eren may or may not have tickled Armin until she accidentally kneed him in the stomach. 

They dressed and headed downstairs for lunch. Eren brought his backpack and his large canvas portfolio with him; he had to sign up for his portfolio review, and prepare for it. It would be happening in the week after spring break. He was more than ready to officially declare his major, as if there was any doubt he’d do art, and portfolio review was required for all studio art majors. 

Connie and Jean looked well-rested, but Sasha, though chipper, had bags under her eyes and Mikasa was only restrained from biting off the nearest head by the four coffee mugs in front of her. Three of them were already empty. She’d offered to be on Sasha Duty the night before, and though Sasha had fallen asleep as soon as they got to Mikasa’s room, she’d also woken up several times during the night, still slightly high and ravenously hungry, and asked for some sort of food which could not be procured at such an hour. Mikasa placated her with what she had on hand (mostly Easy Mac and leftover chicken nuggets), resulting in the barely-contained rage monster now seated at the lunch table. 

Eren gave her a pitying look. Her eyes blazed, and she mouthed “never again”. Nevertheless, he expected her to do the exact same thing next time she followed Sasha into the forest. 

Properly sandwiched, souped, and potato salad-ed, Eren set off for the art building while Armin returned to their room and finished packing. 

Eren found the Illustration studio blessedly empty, and he spread out his work over the tables and floor, separated by class. Sketches and prep work were out, so he piled all of that to the side. He made more piles of pieces that were smudged to hell and back, so he could clean them up and seal them before making decisions. 

His drawings and illustrations of people were what he really wanted to show. Illustrative, stylised portraiture was kind of his thing, and it was what he enjoyed most. Maybe he still had a little leftover sugoi desu from his weeaboo phase, but he liked comics as a storytelling medium, and even if he couldn’t write a story to save his life, he loved turning words into pictures, and he loved people. Maybe he could work with an author someday, make a comic together. That was a thing, right? 

But, the department wanted to see a range in each majoring student’s capabilities, so Eren pulled some of his better landscapes and a still-life he didn’t despise, and set them aside for consideration, along with a multitude of portraits and self-portraits that clearly displayed his progress in the last year. 

“Portfolio review?” 

Eren turned away from his work. 

Levi set down a big box of things on an empty corner of a table. Apparently the Fates had decided it was Distraction Time. “I remember that. It was awful. They almost didn’t let me do the review because I was a junior, and then my work made one of the professors sick.”

“…What the hell were you drawing before the naked people?”

“Ever heard of body horror?”

Eren nodded. 

“That. A lot of it. I’d do totally normal portraits, and then turn them horrifying. Blood, protruding bones, muscles showing, that sort of thing, rendered in tempera and spray paint with more technical skill than most of the seniors. I also liked painting weirdly proportioned giants eating people in the goriest possible ways. Basically the stuff of nightmares.”

“That sounds awful.”

“It was. I was pretty fucked up back then.” 

“And now?” Eren was mostly joking. Mostly. 

“Still fucked up, but in different ways.” He hopped up on the table and recreated his usual sitting position as best he could, using his box of things as a stand-in for the back of a chair. “Do I get a hello?”

Eren didn’t need to be told twice. He got into Levi’s space and kissed him. “Hi.” When he pulled away, Levi looked angry. 

“Why do you smell like incense?”

“Oh. Um.”

Levi grabbed a bit of Eren’s sweatshirt and pulled him in for a closer sniff. “Weed. I thought so. You smell like weed.”

“Shit. I. Uh.” Eren searched fast, grasping at fleeting thoughts for a response. Was Levi going to turn him in? 

“Don’t ever do that shit again, you hear me?”

“I didn’t! Some of my friends did, I just went with them, I swear.”

“That’s what everyone says.”

Eren wrenched his sweatshirt out of Levi’s ever-tightening grip. He could handle people coming to the wrong conclusions about him; he certainly couldn’t blame Levi for that particular assumption. But he would _not_ stand for someone accusing him of lying. “Don’t talk to me like that!”

Levi didn’t back down. “I’m not going to date someone who’s using drugs. They’re illegal for a reason.” He pushed off the table, ready to walk out. 

“Yeah, because you’re such a prime example of a law-abiding citizen.”

Levi had his hands on the box, full of binders and supplies from his office that he was taking home over break, and he tensed his arms, almost ready to hurl it all at Eren. Instead, with a forced calm, he explained himself. “Do you know _why_ I became a whore, instead of a shitty barista? I found a guy who’d give me fifty dollars worth of whatever I wanted if I spent an hour with him. I thought, maybe if I made a living of it, Hanji and Erwin wouldn’t notice. It took them two years because I’m a fucking pro at lying. By then, I was addicted to the high, or whatever I thought a high was. Half the time it was really a low, but even bad trips were paradise to me.” He turned around, finally, to look Eren in the eye. “So don’t you dare go down that road. You’ll get trapped, and I can’t watch you do that. And you’ll pull me down with you. I’ll cut you out of my life if that’s what it takes to keep all the progress I’ve made.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you.” 

“Levi--”

“If you’re really sorry, swear to me you’ll never do it again.”

“I haven’t done it yet, and I’ll never do it.” He wanted to hold Levi, seal it with a kiss, but he knew that would make it worse. “I can’t say I won’t be around my friends when they do, but I’ll make sure I shower between that and when I see you.”

“I’d rather you just not go with them at all. They might try to pressure you into it.”

“They won’t. They didn’t last night, and they won’t.” Of that, Eren could be certain. Jean might try, the bastard, but Sasha and Connie would never. Mikasa would probably specifically tell Eren not to, even if it made her a hypocrite. 

“Then I guess that’s the best I can ask of you.” Levi leaned back against the table. “The smell… it brings me back. He always smelled like incense-on-weed. He sold more than that. He started with weed, then convinced me to try other things. I did… I did most of it. I’m not proud of that. I don’t regret selling myself, but I regret him and I regret going to him enough to get addicted and I regret hiding it.” 

He regretted letting the guy fuck him in dirty alleyways, and he regretted letting that scum of the earth get off watching Levi get high, and he regretted coming down in filthy bathwater with a layer of street grease floating on top and a layer of dirt lining the bottom of the tub. He regretted taking six months to let the doctors at his rehab centre test him for STDs, because needles reminded him of the high that he was trying to leave behind; he was clean, but not knowing probably made his fears worse. He regretted never telling his brother and sister… 

“What was his name?” Eren asked. 

“Does it matter? He’s dead.”

Eren didn’t push him. He didn’t know Levi’s friends that well, but he knew one of them was a psychiatrist and therapist, and the other was into neuro-something-ology. Levi had probably talked about this guy plenty. It wasn’t always the time to drag out old wounds, as he was learning fast. 

“I wish I could hug you,” Eren said. 

“I know.” 

“I’m leaving tonight.”

“I know.” Levi absently picked at the peeling skin around his fingernails. “What time?”

“I’m off-campus by seven.”

“Have dinner with me,” Levi suggested. “Bring Armin. Shower first, and I might even give you a kiss good-bye.”

Eren smiled tentatively. He wasn’t sure if they were okay yet, but if Levi still wanted him around and still wanted to kiss him, things were looking up. “Will do.” Before Levi turned away, Eren blew him a kiss. 

Levi looked at him like he’d grown a second and third head, but then he rolled his eyes and mimed catching the kiss and putting it in his pocket. “See you, fuckhead.”

“See you later, shitlord.”

There was the barest hint of a smile on Levi’s face. “You’re learning.”


	25. Pi Day, Bi Day, Bye Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The past, the present, and the future all walked into a bar. It was tense. Starring Levi I-Can-Be-Romantic-When-I-Want-To-I-Just-Don’t-Want-To Ackerman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have many excel spreadsheets relevant to this story. one of them is a calendar, which i use to keep track of which chapter covers exactly which days. so this chapter actually does happen on march 14, aka pi day. 
> 
> warnings: presence of an unreasonably large novelty dildo, discussion of piercings in sensitive areas, awkward discussions of sex, potentially troubling family situations
> 
> beta'd by remembrance

Dinner with Levi was awkward. 

It would have been even if Levi hadn’t sniffed Eren’s shirt when they hugged at the door, but that certainly added. There was the lingering haze of Eren and Levi’s fight, still far from resolved, in every word and look and action; there was also the memory of the last time the three of them had been in Levi’s apartment together. The couch seemed to stare at them, both inviting and intimidating. 

Armin tried to diffuse the awkwardness. “So, Levi, what are you doing over break?”

“Painting.” After a few moments of silence and a forkful of rice, Levi remembered how to be polite. “You?”

Armin and Eren glanced at each other, not at all subtly. “Um, you know, hanging out,” she said. 

Levi looked up from his food for the first time all night. He saw Eren’s face appeared to have caught fire, and Armin had ducked her head forward to hide behind her hair. “Have fun,” Levi said. “And, word of advice: there’s no such thing as too much lube.”

Armin coughed. She added her glass of water to the thin wall of things to hide behind. 

“You’re okay with it?” Eren asked. His voice was higher than usual. 

“I agreed to this set-up, didn’t I?” It was… not wholly unexpected, and kind of threw into even more stark relief how Levi _wasn’t_ ready to go there just yet. But it wasn’t a _problem_. 

After a little more silence, and a little more picking at the fancy Greek take-out on her plate, Armin asked, “Are you sure you don’t want us to pay you back?”

Levi pointed at Armin with his knife. “Don’t you fucking dare.” 

She squeaked. 

Levi realised he was pointing with his knife. He put it down and deliberately avoided eye contact with her. 

“He’s sorry,” Eren translated. Armin relaxed; Levi didn’t. 

They all lapsed back into silence. Even Eren, who usually didn’t have the best brain-to-mouth filter, second-guessed every thought that floated across his mind, and ended up bottling it all in. 

“This is really fucking awkward,” Levi said. As if they didn’t all know it already. 

He got up. 

“Stay here.” 

He left the room. Armin and Eren looked uneasily at each other, then down at their food, until Levi returned. 

He leaned over the table and, with more flourish than it really warranted, stuck a huge, purple dildo in the centre of the table, where, in another house, a decorative vase of flowers might perhaps reside. The suction cup at the base made a rubbery fart noise as it vacuum-sealed itself to the table, and the whole thing sort of wobbled in place. Aside from the colour and size, it was rather realistic, with veins and a minutely skin-textured surface and ripples to imitate foreskin just below the head. 

It also kind of sparkled. 

“There,” Levi said. “Now it’s awkward for a reason.”

Levi plopped back into his seat and started eating again, with far more gusto now that he’d broken some of the tension. Sort of. After a few bites, Eren and Armin burst out laughing. 

“Please tell me that’s not the only one you have,” Eren said. There were tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. 

“I have a bit of a collection,” Levi said dryly. “This one’s just for show.” 

“For _show_?”

“Well, yeah. It’s nice for people to _think_ I can take a twelve-inch dick, but I can’t actually do it. I mean, look how thick this thing is.” Levi reached out a hand and grasped the dildo tightly. “I can’t even get my hand around it.”

“Oh god,” Eren said around his laughter. “I’m gonna miss you.”

“What, because of my shitty sense of humour?” He let go of the dildo; it wobbled again, glittering once more under the bright fluorescent kitchen lights. 

“Among other things.” Eren smiled, not through a laugh, but all warm sunshine, the way that made Levi melt a little. 

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll miss you too.” He looked at their half-eaten paidakia and spanakorizo, hoping for a way to change the topic from this mushy couple-y stuff. “Eat your food. I have pie, too.”

\---

Levi walked Eren and Armin out. Eren turned to him at the door and grabbed him in a hug, then left a soft kiss on his lips. 

“See you in a week.”

Levi huffed like he was annoyed by the affection. “See you, loser. Call me?”

“Definitely. And if I take too long, you call me.”

“I’ll try.” 

Eren stepped aside and opened the door. Jean’s car was outside; their stuff was already packed into his trunk. It was raining hard, and he looked ready to start honking for them. 

“What, none for me?” Armin asked. She held her arms out. 

Levi looked absolutely baffled, but he let her in for a tentative hug, too. Something seemed to surprise him, because his eyebrows shot up and his eyes opened wider than Eren had ever seen. 

Jean actually did honk then, so Armin broke away from Levi, and Eren didn’t get a chance to ask what that reaction was about. They headed out and waved as they left. Levi didn’t wave back; he just waited by the door while Eren and Armin ran through the rain and got in the car. 

The car pulled away. Levi saw Eren and Armin wave again from the backseat. He watched until they were out of sight. 

A minute later, Eren got a phone call. He looked at the caller ID and smiled before picking up. “Hello?”

“ _You took too long._ ”

\---

Mikasa looked up from her suitcase to the Skype call she was sort-of having with Sasha. “Should I bring a swimsuit?”

“I can assure you,” Sasha said, “inland, northern California is not primed for swimming this time of year. There’s a pool in my apartment complex but it won’t be open until late May. It won’t be nearly warm enough anyway.”

“But what if--”

“No. Use that packing space for underwear or something.”

Mikasa spared a glance at her hastily thrown together duffle bag. Clothes, unfolded and wrinkled, were thrown into and on top of and around the poor thing. She didn’t intend to fold any of it. “Right. Underwear.”

“Mikasaaaaaaaaa!”

“I’m really bad at packing.” Notoriously bad, actually. She’d forgotten so many things for sleepovers or class trips or vacations over the years. It was a huge problem. The only reason she’d gotten all her shit packed for college was that she did most of the packing a month in advance, and she’d still forgotten some things. 

“Please tell me you at least packed pants that aren’t jeans.”

“Um.” That was a no. 

Sasha groaned. “Good thing I packed early. I’m coming over.”

“OhJesusyoudon’thavetodothat--” Mikasa started picking up trash and haphazardly tried to make her bed. 

“Stop cleaning. I’ve seen your room in worse states, I’m sure.”

Mikasa wasn’t so sure about that, but Sasha said she’d be over in five minutes, so she just sat on the ground in front of her dresser and sighed. 

Her friendship with Sasha was… weird. It was almost like they were dating, in some ways; they cuddled and watched movies and went out to dinner together and basically lived together in Mikasa’s room. They met up between classes, even if it was kind of inconvenient, just to say hi and maybe hug or something. It wasn’t something Mikasa was used to, but it wasn’t unwelcome either. It was also hard to really make sense of, because they were friends, and that was it. They weren’t dating; she didn’t want to, and neither did Sasha. She’d even asked, once, if Sasha had any romantic feelings for her, and Sasha said she didn’t. 

But now they were about to embark on a week-long trip across the country and back. They would be together for eight days straight, most of that alone in a cramped car, and in the middle of it Mikasa would meet Sasha’s parents, who didn’t actually know Sasha was asexual and who Sasha was pretty sure thought she was a lesbian and bringing home her girlfriend. 

If that didn’t sound like dating, Mikasa wasn’t sure what did. 

Sasha came in, no knock on the unlocked door, and she sighed at the state of Mikasa’s room. She started folding and organising the clothes Mikasa had already packed -- “Three pairs of jeans? Really? Bring one. And you only need about half as many shirts. My parents will insist on doing our laundry while we’re home anyway.” She went through Mikasa’s drawers too, grabbing underwear and a set of pyjamas and two pairs of sweatpants -- “Trust me” -- and socks and all the things Mikasa would have totally forgotten without her help. 

After separating out Mikasa’s clothes, Sasha picked up a red-and-white plaid flannel shirt from next to the laundry basket. Mikasa had worn it the day before and just tossed it on the ground before she went to bed. Sasha held it up in the light and cocked her head to the side. “Isn’t this mine?”

Mikasa groaned and, in her spot seated on the floor, she stuck her head between her knees. “Holy shit, I never asked for this.”

“Asked for what?”

Mikasa looked her in the eye but still his most of her face behind her legs. “Are we dating?”

“What? No.” Sasha kneeled down, tossing the shirt she was holding to the side. “Are you okay?”

“No. I keep thinking about how we’re such giant lesbians.”

Sasha laughed. “No, honey, Ymir and Krista are lesbians. Annie’s a lesbian. We’re friends.”

“We live together. We’re going to meet your parents. I’ve been wearing your plaid.” Mikasa picked up the shirt by its collar. “I don’t even _like_ plaid.”

“There’s more to being a lesbian than wearing plaid.” Sasha took the shirt back and tossed it at her bag by the door. “Liking girls, for one. You don’t like anyone, and neither do I.”

“I know. That’s what’s so weird about it. We act like we’re dating, but… we’re not.”

Sasha shrugged. “Zucchini?”

“What?” Mikasa didn’t understand what vegetables had to do with any of this. 

“Zucchini. A queerplatonic partner. So, like, a close friend, but that you do couple-y things with, but you’re not dating.” Sasha got a little nervous then, because she didn’t want to assume things. “I mean, that’s how I’ve thought of us, I guess. We don’t have to be.”

“No that’s… kind of nice, actually.” Mikasa tugged at her zucchini’s hand. The gesture said ‘hug me’. So Sasha did. 

“We do have to finish packing, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

\---

Jean helped unload the car at the train station. While Armin waited on line to print out their tickets, he watched Eren watching her. 

“You’re really smitten, aren’t you?”

Eren scoffed -- actually _scoffed_ , what a turd -- at him. “ _Smitten_? Who even talks like that?”

“I do. Aren’t you?”

Eren looked back at Armin. “Of course I am.”

“With both of them, right?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s different, but yeah.” Eren leaned back against his bench seat, still keeping an eye on Armin. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Yeah, actually, I do. Do you really think this is right?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“All of it. You and Levi, you and Armin, you with Armin _and_ Levi -- I mean, do you think that’s fair to her?” 

“You know she told me to do this, right?” Eren was still looking away; Armin had just gotten to the front of the line at the ticket print station, and was entering confirmation numbers. “It wasn’t fair for me to choose between them when I have feelings for them both. She said she’d rather I try this polyamorous thing than try to choose.”

“You’re dodging the question. Do you really think that’s good for her?”

“It’s what she wants, so yes. It’s what I want and it’s what Levi wants, too. And it works for us, or at the very least it has so far. We’re happy. Maybe you think I’m not treating her right, or I’m not giving her everything, but… I think you’re wrong.”

“How would you know?”

“I’ve known Armin my entire life. I can’t even remember a time when she wasn’t my best friend. We were in day-care together, we grew up together. If there’s any guy out there who knows how to give her what she needs and treat her right as her boyfriend, it’s me.” Eren took a deep breath. “I’m still learning how to balance my life between the two of them, and it’s not easy. But I’m going to do it, because I… well, I love her, and I really like Levi.”

“Love doesn’t guarantee your relationships will work.” 

“I didn’t say it did. Trust me, I know love doesn’t do shit if you’re not willing to work for it. But it’s a reason to try.” He glanced at Jean briefly. “Have you talked to her about it?”

“Not really.”

“You should.”

Armin was coming back with her and Eren’s tickets, so Eren stopped talking and Jean mulled over what Eren had said. He was pretty sure Armin was happy, but there had to be a catch. He’d seen too many poly relationships fail not to take this one with a little skepticism. 

Then again, if anyone could pull it off… 

Eren and Armin were basically a single unit anyway -- not in the co-dependent, attached at the hip way, but in a sort of way that they were just comfortable around each other, so much so that they could do anything together. Maybe adding Levi into the mix was just right for them. 

Jean was still skeptical. He’d still call Armin over break and talk it out with her when she had time, but he could accept it for now. 

“I think we can handle it on our own from here,” Armin said. “Thanks, Jean. You’ll be here to pick us up next Sunday, right?”

“Yeah, it’s already in my calendar. I’ll be here.” 

“Great.” She threw herself at him for a good-bye hug. “See you soon!” She stepped back, and then looked between him and Eren. 

“Uh,” Eren started. “Yeah. Thanks. See you.” He fidgeted a little. “I hope you’re not expecting a hug from me.”

“I’m not.”

“Good, ‘cause you’re not getting one.”

“Too gay for you? No homo?” Jean laughed. 

Eren clenched his fists. “We are literally both bisexual --”

“Aaaand we are leaving!” Armin interrupted. She reached between them and grabbed the handle of her suitcase. “They just put up the platform number. Time to go. See you Jean!” 

“Yeah, see you.” Jean watched them race off to the platform. They still had another ten minutes before the train, but, you know, it was probably better off for he and Eren not to get into a fight in public. 

Jean headed back to his car. As soon as he sat down, he got a text from Eren: 

_dont forget your piercing, you dick_

Jean groaned. He was going to do it, he just… ugh. Marco had _just_ given him the okay to switch positions and he was really looking forward to experiencing anal sex from the perspective of the one not getting sexed in the anus, and he was pretty sure that would not be possible while healing from such a piercing. From Jean’s extensive research on the subject, he was certain it would be worth it after the healing process, but _during_... not so much. Maybe he could convince Marco to go for it that night, get it over with before Holes opened the next day… 

\---

“Excuse me, Miss.”

Armin gave her suitcase one last shove and it fell into place in the overhead compartment. She gave the business-suited man behind her some room to pass, and she smiled at him. It wasn’t a particularly new thing for people who didn’t know her to assume she was a woman; she was cute and short and had that shoulder-length blonde hair (now an almost completely faded orange-tinted off-white) so she’d been called ‘Miss’ or ‘lady’ long before she’d come out. It was almost enough to call herself lucky. She sat down next to Eren and grabbed his hand, resting on the armrest between them. 

“Hey there, Miss,” Eren said. 

Armin leaned on his shoulder. “Oh, hush.” She squeezed his hand. “Grandpa doesn’t know, though. You, um, you’ll have to call me a guy around him.”

“You’re not going to tell him?”

Armin shook her head as best she could with it still on Eren’s shoulder. “I’m not sure how he’ll react yet. I want to tell him, but I don’t know if I can.”

Eren had a million things he wanted to say (he loves you, if he doesn’t accept you he’s an asshole, I will fuck him up if he does anything wrong) but he knew Armin knew them all. He extracted his hand from hers and maneuvered them so that he had his arm around her. “I’ll do my best. I might just have to avoid him, but I’ll do what I can. Whatever’s best for you. And if you decide you want to tell him, I’ll be there for you. If you decide you don’t, well, I’ll still be there for you.” 

“Thanks.” 

The train ride was pretty quiet; Armin read, and Eren plugged himself into his music and tried to get a little sketching done. They switched trains in New Haven, which was a giant pain in the ass, but then Eren fell asleep on the second train and Armin had to shake him awake five minutes before their stop in New York City. 

They were in Grisha’s car by 11 PM, and he looked like he had some things to say about their hair but he was far too tired to do so. Which was exactly the plan; avoiding conflict was why they had picked such a late train. They knew how to avoid battles -- or at least Armin did. 

Grandpa Arlert, bless him, had stayed up until 11:30 to see his grandkid come home from college. He and Armin hugged and whispered their greetings, careful not to wake the other tenants, and Armin said good-bye to Eren and brought her suitcase in. They went straight to bed, saving the real hellos and conversations for the morning. 

Eren wasn’t quite as lucky. 

“Are you two dating?” Grisha asked. There was no judgment, just curiosity, and Eren was grateful at least for that. 

“Yeah.”

“It was only a matter of time, I guess.” He smiled, or tried to, at Eren through the rear-view mirror. With his frown lines and tired eyes it wasn’t particularly comforting; it looked kind of forced. 

“Keep your eyes on the road, Dad.”

Grisha’s smile fell, but he did refocus his attention. “I always had a feeling you’d end up being gay. Didn’t think it would take Wall College to get you to turn, but…”

“I’m bisexual. And I didn’t _turn_.”

“You know what I mean.”

Eren flicked his eyebrows up and down once, his sarcastic glare coming to settle on his face. His old habits of fighting with his father came back quickly, not that they’d ever really left. It was late, though, and he didn’t want to get in a shouting match in the car. Not again. So he shut up, and looked resolutely out the windows. And, as always, he checked over and over to make sure Grisha was watching the road. 

They only had to go around the corner; Eren and Armin’s houses shared a backyard, but were on parallel streets. Any other time of day Grisha would have just parked in front of the Jager house and Armin would have crossed the yard to get home. 

Eren went up to the second floor with only a gruff “good-night” directed at his father, and he hauled his suitcase up with him. His room, unsurprisingly, was exactly as he’d left it, except with a thin film of dust on the furniture. He opened the window a little to air it out, appreciating the slightly warmer New York suburb air, and as he looked out across the darkened backyard he saw Armin’s bedroom light on. She walked past the open window in her pyjamas and caught sight of him and waved. 

Eren waved back and then tried to make a heart with his arms. Armin appeared to laugh, and she blew him a kiss. She went to bed, then, and her lights shut off. Eren followed suit, shucking his jeans and sweatshirt and flopping down on top of his blankets. By the time Grisha came upstairs, he was already asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stop “no homo” jean kirschtein 2014


	26. Blue; The Colour Of Our Planet From Far, Far Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin talks to her parents, yells at Levi, and cuddles a bunch of dogs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to remembrance for beta-ing! 
> 
> warnings: grief, coming out, misgendering

Armin awoke to blue skies outside her window. She yawned and rolled over, and she pulled her similarly sky-blue bed sheets up over her face, hoping for another few hours of sleep. 

She awoke a second time to gentle knocking on her door. 

“Armin, wake up. It’s nearly noon.”

“Nnnoooo,” she responded, indicating vast amounts of do not want, but she stretched and got out of bed anyway. 

More than anything, Armin wanted to shower and get rid of the grimy travel feeling, but she smelled food, so she went down to the kitchen first and joined her grandfather at the table. One of the tenants was boiling herself a few eggs at the stove and yawning. If Armin remembered correctly, and she did, this was the nurse who worked from one in the afternoon until three in the morning, three days a week. Her name was Lauda. She’d moved in only a few weeks before Armin left for college. 

“Nice hair,” Lauda said. 

“Thanks.” 

Armin’s Grandfather checked a pan on another of the stove’s four elements. He turned off that burner and spooned a mixture of spinach and cubed sweet potatoes onto a plate with a flat, round piece of bread underneath. He passed the plate to Armin, then made another plate of the same for himself. 

“Thanks, Grandpa.” Armin yawned and shook her head to get her messy hair out of her eyes, and then she tucked in to her food. It wasn’t her favourite meal by any means, but she liked it and it was something she never got to eat at Wall, so she always asked for it when she came home. No-one made spinach-and-yams as well as Grandpa Arlert. 

Lauda plucked her eggs out of the pot with a pair of tongs and placed them gently in a tupperware to take with her to work. She left the pot on the stove to cool; another tenant would use the same one, with fresh water, to boil his own eggs later when he came home, and he would wash it. She picked up her bag from the back of a chair at the table. 

“Nice nails,” she said to Armin. 

Armin dropped her fork on her plate, instantly flexing her fingers to look at said nails. She’d forgotten to take off the polish…

“The same colour your mom used to wear,” Grandpa said. He smiled wistfully, like the colour alone brought back memories of his daughter-in-law. 

“Oh, yeah. It is.” As if she hadn’t picked it specifically for that reason. That same sky-blue was all over Armin’s bedroom and her most-worn colour in clothing. Realising she wasn’t about to get yelled at, Armin closed her fingers around her discarded fork once more, and tried to eat around her slowly waning panic. 

“It suits you,” Lauda said. “Matches your eyes.”

“I guess it does.” Armin’s blue eyes, which she’d inherited from her mom. Her whole face had come from her mom, really, except the button nose that had looked so out-of-place on her dad’s face but fit perfectly on her own, and the wide, round shape of her eyes, which had skipped her dad, but Grandpa Arlert stared at her with those same wide eyes, sunken with age but still bright with a love of life Armin admired. 

Lauda left then, with her bright pink scrubs folded over one arm. “Bye, Armin. Bye, Mr. Arlert.”

The Arlerts kept eating in silence. Not until they had both finished did Grandpa say anything. 

“I haven’t been to their graves in a while. It didn’t seem right to go without you.”

Armin felt that little knot of panic make itself known once more. She wasn’t sure _why_ she was afraid of visiting her parents’ graves, but she was, and what’s more, she didn’t have any valid reason to say no. She’d grieved, though it was hard; she’d moved on, and learned to live life without them, and that was even harder. 

She knew, however, that she couldn’t face them without being honest to them, and telling them who she was. Armin wasn’t sure what she believed about God, but she had always gotten this feeling that her parents were watching over her somehow; if that was so, they already knew she was a woman, and probably had known longer than Armin was willing to admit it even to herself, but she still wanted to say it. 

She just wasn’t sure if she was ready. 

“We don’t have to go if you don’t want,” Grandpa Arlert said when she didn’t respond. 

But they did have to. Armin knew she wouldn’t have another chance until the summer, and if she chickened out now, who was to say she wouldn’t just do the same again next time? 

“No, I want to,” Armin said, sealing her fate. “Can we go today? I want to shower first, but then we should visit.”

She showered while her grandfather washed the dishes, and she dressed herself in loose jeans and a dark blue button-down. Her nail polish was chipping, and she hadn’t brought any more with her to touch it up; she hadn’t expected Grandpa to accept it. After checking the time on her phone, Armin texted Eren ‘ _good morning_ ’ (knowing he wasn’t awake yet), followed by ‘ _*afternoon ;)_ ’, and she slipped on sneakers and went back down to the kitchen, where her grandfather was reading the news on the old desktop computer in the corner. 

Armin went over to him and looked at the screen over his shoulder; to her surprise, everything seemed in working order. No excessive toolbars, no warnings that Java or Flash needed to update, and he even seemed to be using Chrome as his web browser. She suspected Lauda or one of the other tenants had taken up the job of keeping the computer updated; for all that Grandpa Arlert tried to keep up with the times, he couldn’t quite get the hang of troubleshooting the computer. 

“Grandpa?” 

He looked up from an article he’d just opened. “Ready to go?”

They got into the old car that Eren had once affectionately dubbed the Grandmobile, and Grandpa Arlert eased out of the driveway and headed for the cemetery on the edge of town. It was situated behind an old non-denominational Protestant church. Once upon a time, the Arlerts had been distantly religious, in the go-to-Church-on-Easter-and-Christmas sort of way, so they’d been buried by that church, their funeral presided over by the aging priest they’d known for decades. Grandpa still went, sometimes, mostly because it made him feel closer to his late wife, son, and daughter-in-law. 

There were clouds coming in, and the wind picked up, but the sun still shined brightly on them for the time being and they were comfortable in the early spring air as the pair walked across the freshly cut grass. 

Armin’s grandmother was buried to the right of a knobbly old tree that had once been on the property of a neighbouring farm, now greatly reduced in size. Her gravestone, since its installation a year before Armin’s birth, had always borne an additional blank rectangle that would one day hold her husband’s name. Grandpa had remarked more than once how strange it was to look at his own grave while he still lived. 

Further to the right was Armin’s dad, and then her mom. They had been buried in the same grave, and they shared a marker as well. 

There wasn’t much to do; they didn’t light candles or bring flowers, and neither Armin nor her grandfather were ones for prayer. So they talked, telling the graves about their recent lives. About the house, the tenants, retirement and the boredom that came with it; about college, and new friends, and old friends. 

A half-hour later, Grandpa shivered at a gust of wind. “We should get going.”

Armin looked to him, then down at the graves. “You start walking. I need another few minutes. I’ll meet you in the car, okay?”

Grandpa nodded. He kissed his hand, and then pressed the kiss against his wife’s gravestone as he did at the end of every visit. Then he walked off. 

Armin gently sat down on the ground at the edge of her parents’ grave; the grass was a little damp, but not too bad. She played with a little strip of slightly longer grass that the mower must have missed. 

“You probably know already, but a lot has changed this semester.” Armin bit her lip and chewed on it for a moment. “Not… _changed_ exactly; well, some things have changed. I, um. I have a boyfriend. Eren, you know, my best friend. He’s… he’s amazing. You already knew that, I’ve said it enough times in my life, but he’s really been great. He cares about me so much, and he really shows it. I couldn’t wish for a better boyfriend. You’d think that between me, and his other boyfriend, and his Art major, he wouldn’t be able to balance it all, but he does. He makes so much time for me. I… I really love him.” 

She pulled up a few blades of grass, twisted them between her fingers, and then released them to the wind that whipped her hair around her face. 

“Some things haven’t changed; I’m just more honest now. You see, I always knew I was a girl. Since I was little. I told myself I was wrong for a long time; I _had_ to be a boy. But not anymore. I know who I am. I was a girl then, and I hope you’re proud of the woman I grew up to be.”

Armin’s throat swelled as the first of many hot tears spilled over her eyelids, making salty tracks down her cheeks. She rubbed at her eyes with her sleeves, but kept talking, though her voice broke. 

“I grew up without you, but I never stopped missing you. I think about you all the time. So I want you to know who I am now. You… you thought you had a son. But I want to be honest with you. I want you to know me. I want you to know that you have a daughter.”

There was so much more Armin wanted to say, but she couldn’t form any more words around the thick knot in her throat. It was hard enough to breathe. She sat there, trying to keep her sobs quiet enough that they wouldn’t reach her grandfather back at the car. 

She had so much more to say, but she could save it. She’d said this much, and it was a start, at least. 

When her sobs settled and her tears stopped flowing, Armin gave her parting words. “I love you,” she whispered, voice scratchy. She wiped her eyes again, sure her face was puffy and pink and she wouldn’t be able to hide that she’d just cried from her grandfather, but she headed back to the car anyway. 

He did notice, and he asked why she’d been crying, but Armin shook her head and he dropped it. He drove home, and they were both silent, Armin gazing out the window. She didn’t really notice the trees and houses whizzing by, but she smiled, feeling like she’d accomplished something. 

\---

_visited my parents. came out to them._

Armin stared at her phone and at the last sent text until a notification of Eren’s reply popped up. 

_proud of you. come over?_

She wanted to. God, did she want to. Eren’s house was empty, and the _fun_ they could have… but she also wanted to spend some time with her Grandpa. Being home reminded her of just how much she missed him, and how much she wanted to cherish her time with him while she still could. 

There was a week left, anyway. She’d see Eren soon. 

_spending time with grandpa. tomorrow maybe?_

_ok_ , came the reply. 

Armin hoped it really was okay. 

\---

 _It should be illegal to give homework over breaks_ , Armin thought, not for the first time and surely not for the last. She’d set up her laptop, notes, and recent class readings all over the kitchen table just after dinner, and the clock had turned to midnight in what felt like moments. The house smelled of grass (Grandpa Arlert, always eager to show off his continuing good health, mowed the lawn in the small backyard earlier that day) and also slightly of the instant coffee Armin kept drinking to stay awake. There were a few mugs buried under the mountain of papers. “I should have done this earlier,” she mumbled to herself. 

Her Skype made a message notification noise, and Armin jumped, not expecting her computer’s sound to be on. She muted it, then checked the message. 

**eren yeahhhger:** what are you still doing up?  
**armin armout:** writing a paper  
**eren yeahhhger:** should i leave you alone?  
**armin armout:** no i need a distraction  
**armin armout:** its due at 10am though so not too much of a distraction  
**eren yeahhhger:** so i guess asking you to sneak out and come over here is still a no

She sighed, not in irritation but maybe a little bit in pity. For two days now she’d blown off Eren, even though they had planned to spend the whole week together. 

**armin armout:** sorry.  
**armin armout:** i miss you. i just don’t get to see grandpa a lot.

She was honest, at least. And she would make it up to Eren when she saw him. 

**eren yeahhhger:** i understand. i don’t want to rush you.  
**eren yeahhhger:** tell him i say hi.  
**armin armout:** i will.  
**armin armout:** rush me?  
**armin armout:** youre not rushing me. i was the one who asked in the first place.  
**armin armout:** i still want the d, don’t worry  
**eren yeahhhger:** oh my god armin  
**armin armout:** ;)

Armin wrote out a couple decent paragraphs before Eren messaged her again. 

**eren yeahhhger:** i called levi  
**armin armout:** and???  
**eren yeahhhger:** i think he’s angry with me.  
**eren yeahhhger:** which i can understand, because i did kind of fuck up before we left. but i don’t think it’s the same thing.  
**armin armout:** what happened?

She left the Skype window when the little “eren yeahhhger is typing” message continued for over a minute, and wrote a little more of her paper. When another notification popped up, she returned to Skype to see a wall of text. 

**eren yeahhhger:** i called him twice yesterday. um, two days ago? saturday. the first time when i got up, and that was all good, we talked about the trip and how much painting he’s gotten done. i told him i miss him, and he said he misses me too. then he called again a few hours ago, right after dad left for the hospital, and he told me he misses me again and he wanted to hear my voice. which I thought was kind of cute, and so i told him that, and he got all grumbly. then i sang to him. he wanted elton john so i did tiny dancer and i thought it was going well because he said i was sweet and he laughed. he never laughs. i think i’ve heard him laugh like, once. but then he just hung up. it wasn’t because i did anything. he was just laughing and then he stopped laughing and made this angry noise and the line went dead. i’ve been trying to call him back but he won’t answer, and a few minutes ago he texted me and asked me not to call him anymore.

Armin read over Eren’s explanation a few times. It didn’t seem to her like Eren had done anything wrong; Levi was probably just being stubborn, and refusing to tell Eren what was bothering him. 

**armin armout:** give me 5 minutes.

She searched through the pile of papers strewn across the table for her phone, and looked through her contacts for Levi’s number. If he was pissed with Eren, he wasn’t going to pick up the phone for her either, so she called him from her house phone. 

“ _Who the fuck--?_ ”

“You asshole,” Armin hissed. She didn’t want to wake anyone in the house, but holy shit, she was angry. 

“ _Armin?_ ” Levi sounded genuinely surprised to hear from her. 

“Yeah. I don’t know what you’re angry about, but Eren doesn’t know what he did wrong and from what he told me I can’t tell either. Only you know why you’re mad. Talk to him.”

“ _Right now?_ ”

“No; in a week, after he’s given up all hope of ever getting to so much as hold your hand again. _Yes_ , now.” She moved to hang up the phone, but Levi called out for her to wait. “Hm?”

“ _I’m not mad at him; I’m annoyed with myself._ ”

“Good to know, but again, don’t take it out on him. You know he deserves better. He’s giving you his best, so don’t leave him in the dark like this. And _he’s_ the one you need to tell, not me.”

“ _Yeah. You’re right. I’ll talk to him. Bye._ ”

“Bye.” Armin hung up and returned to her computer. Eren had left her with a series of question marks. As she sat down, a new message came in. 

**eren yeahhhger:** he’s calling me  
**armin armout:** answer him!

Ohhh, she would have a _talk_ with Levi when she went back to school. He’d patch things up on his own with Eren (at least, she hoped so) but running Eren around in circles like that, acting angry at him for nothing and then refusing to talk to him, was just fucked up. 

She turned back to her paper, feverishly typing out three more pages to turn her heavily annotated notes, readings, and research into something resembling cohesion. Fuelled by frustration at Levi and copious amounts of very bitter coffee, Armin finished writing around four in the morning, and she gave the paper one last read-through to edit it before sending it off to her professor. 

Windows Update reared its ugly head as soon as the e-mail went out, and Armin decided she may as well just let it do its thing right away, so she let it reboot while she cleaned up. All of the notes and handouts were carefully dated at the top-right corner, so Armin put them in order before clipping them all back into her binder; her own research materials went into another folder, in order of publication. Her heavy textbook lay open at the bottom of the pile, and she closed it and dropped it into her bag, followed by the binder and folder, and nudged it into a corner with her foot. She would bring it upstairs when she got back the strength to carry it. Coffee mugs went in the sink to be washed later; she filled them with a little water to soak. 

When all this was done, her laptop still hadn’t restarted; it displayed a message that Skype was not allowing it to shut down. Armin cancelled the reboot and checked her chat window. 

**eren yeahhhger:** thank you  
_eren yeahhhger is offline_

Armin smiled with what was left of her energy. She should call him in the morning. Or maybe the afternoon… whenever she woke up… 

\---

Armin woke to gentle laughter, badly muffled and only a few feet away. 

“Mmmmuh?” 

“Eloquent.” 

Armin whipped her head around. “Pere!” She stumbled up out of what she suddenly realised was a seat at the kitchen table, where she’d fallen asleep at her laptop. She then threw her arms around the man. “I haven’t seen you at all!”

He laughed and hugged her back. “My hours have only gotten weirder since you went off to college, kid. I just got home.” Pere worked as a security guard for a museum in the city, so he had a long commute and usually worked nights or weekends. Armin was used to not seeing much of him, but she still missed him. He was one of their first tenants, and had rescued Armin from many a nightmare when her parents’ deaths were fresh in her mind. “What have you been up to?” Pere asked when she let go of him. 

Armin glanced at her laptop, which had long since shut itself down, restarted, and then gone to sleep when left unused. “I wrote a paper last night.”

“How late were you up?”

“Four-ish? What time is it now?”

“It’s eight. Sorry I woke you.” He handed her a piece of toast in apology. 

“It’s okay. Thanks.” She took the toast. “I’m up now so I may as well stay up.”

“Have fun with that. I’m going to sleep though.” He took a bite out of his own toast and gave her a half-hearted salute with the rest of it. “Nice seeing you again but I’m too tired to stand up for much longer. See you later.”

Armin could have gone back to sleep; she wasn’t planning to call Eren for a few hours, as he wouldn’t be awake, and she probably needed her sleep if she was going to go over his house, but… nope, she was awake. Nothing to be done about it now. She cleaned up her laptop and decided to take advantage of the nice weather with a walk around the neighbourhood. 

She changed clothes first, because sweatpants were probably better for a relaxing walk than pyjama pants, and more acceptable outside of a college campus, and then she set out with purpose down the block. Up and down the streets she went, and she stopped at every house with a dog in the yard to pet them and smile at them and gush over how soft and adorable they were. Most of the dogs seemed to recognise her; this had been her usual relaxing walk route all throughout high school, and she had petted every dog the same way back then too. She didn’t actually know many of the owners personally… she just really loved their dogs. Such sweet babies! Adorable fluffs! Excited jumpers! Wow!

One dog in particular barrelled towards her as soon as she spotted Armin, and Armin ran towards her as well. The dog knocked her over, as always, and through trial and error Armin had learned that falling on one’s ass was slightly less painful on grass than on a sidewalk. 

“Ahaha! Down, Bean!” Armin laughed at the dog while she licked her face. The dog was bigger than Armin; she was one of those huge, extra-fluffy breeds that tended to forget that they were not eternally puppies. Bean’s smaller brother, Sonny, came around the house so fast he looked like he was flying, and he tried to burrow his face in between Bean and Armin. 

There was something about being covered in two very large, very excited dogs that just made Armin blissfully happy. She laughed aloud, probably waking a whole bunch of people up -- but hey, it was Monday morning. They needed to be up soon anyway. 

The nearest house’s front door opened, and the dogs instantly left Amin and ran for the noise. She sat up and looked towards the distraction. “Morning, Moblit!”

He waved back as he set down breakfast for his dogs on the front porch. Behind him, his mother wheeled herself closer to the door to get a better look. “Is that Armin?”

“Hi, Ilse!” Armin sat up and brushed herself off; her pants already had tons of grass stains, what was one more? She jogged towards the house, intending to get the petting she came for. She kneeled on the porch and ruffled Sonny’s fur while he ate, not really minding that his tail kept whacking her in the back of the head. 

“Moblit, where are your manners? Give the poor girl a towel or something, look at her face.” Ilse snapped at Moblit. Armin was kind of covered in dog slobber. She didn’t mind that much; she had a few more dogs to cuddle before she went home anyway, and she’d take a shower when she got back. 

He sighed and shook his head. “Ma, how many times to I have to tell you; Armin’s a guy.”

“No she isn’t.” Ilse had always been adamant about this, ever since she had first met Armin years before. Lesser humans might have wondered if this influenced Armin’s identity, but Armin already knew who she was before she met Ilse. The old woman was just perceptive, often in the particular ways that made her seem more senile than anything else. 

“She’s right, you know.” Armin thought she might as well give it a shot.

“If you say so,” Moblit said, and he headed off to get her a towel. 

Ilse just smiled and nodded, taking her achievement to heart. “You go, girl.”

Armin loved Ilse; not just because she knew her gender from the start, or because she had the biggest fluffiest dogs within walking distance, but also because she genuinely cared about people. From little things like making sure Armin could wipe off her face to bigger things like not telling Eren’s dad or Armin’s grandfather when they and Mikasa snuck out at night, and making sure Moblit was on neighbourhood watch that night so he could get them out of trouble if need be. Ilse was kind of like an extra grandmother to all the kids (and young adults) around. 

Moblit returned with a damp towel and Armin wiped her face and hands off. She handed the towel back to him and stood up, giving one last head-pat to each of the dogs. 

“Wait, Armin.” Moblit stopped her. “Are you really a girl?”

“Yes.” She smiled at him. “I’ll see you around.”

She didn’t stick around for a response, instead letting Moblit puzzle it out on his own. She had important dog-petting business to attend to. 

Armin passed by Eren’s house a little while later; the Jaegers didn’t have a dog, so she walked right on by, but she noticed the garage was open and Grisha’s car was inside. He was probably about to leave for work, which meant Eren definitely wasn’t awake. He tended to stay up late and wake up late specifically so that he would sleep until long after his dad left, even if that meant they’d have to have dinner together, because Grisha was easier to talk to when he was just tired than when he was tired _and_ cranky. 

The sky was blue, the grass was green, the trees were blooming, and Armin had petted _so many dogs_ by the time she returned home. Her hands and face felt sticky and her clothes smelled like grass and wet fur, so she stripped in her room and left her clothes on the floor while she showered. 

Armin combed conditioner through her hair, releasing the strong scent into the steamy bathroom air. She’d taken a bit of a risk in bringing her frilly, flowery body wash and conditioner with her, but she was pretty sure Grandpa never came into her room anyway. He also didn’t have a habit of sniffing her, so he wasn’t likely to notice she smelled of hibiscus and wild berry. Either way, they were much more enjoyable scents than Man Soap. 

Well, okay, she did kind of like how Eren smelled. But he didn’t really use Man Soap. He used those off-brand, unisex shower products that smelled like Clean Breeze or Fresh Laundry or Summer Rain. Around Thanksgiving he’d gotten a shampoo that smelled like cinnamon and Armin had not-so-discreetly found extra excuses to hug him for the next month. 

She soaped up her body, then, and in anticipation of finally going to see Eren she paid extra attention to all those hard-to-reach areas she usually didn’t bother with. She washed her face last, and then rinsed herself off all at once. 

Armin wondered, while she gently stretched her muscles and watched soap suds swirl down the drain, if she should prepare herself ahead of time or just let Eren stretch her open when she got to him. There were benefits to both options, she supposed, but then again she didn’t actually know how long she would _stay_ stretched like that. She could also do it herself in front of him; maybe he’d like to watch her do it. 

And then she realised it. She was standing in the shower wondering whose responsibility it was to stretch out her asshole before fucking it. Armin snorted and laughed, and she grabbed the soap ledge to steady herself. 

“Oh my god,” she gasped. She shook her head, then went back to rinsing herself, still giggling. 

Out of the shower and wrapped in a big fluffy towel, Armin sat on her bed and called Eren. He answered with a sleepy, garbled “Hello?”

“Morning, Eren.”

Eren seemed to perk up. “Armin! Morning.”

“I was thinking maybe I could come over--”

“YES,” Eren shouted. “I mean. Um. Yeah. Yeah, you can definitely do that.” 

She could almost feel him blushing -- oh wait, nope, she was blushing too. “Great. When should I come over?”

“Um…” She heard some rustling. “I’d say now, but I haven’t showered in two days and there’s a ton of random crap all over my bed, so, maybe come over for lunch? Noon-ish?”

“I can do that.”

“Great. Awesome.” Eren was trying really hard to contain his excitement. It was… kind of working. It was also kind of adorable how much it _wasn’t_ working. 

“Oh and Eren?”

“Hm?”

“Cut your nails.”

That time, she could _definitely_ feel him blushing.


	27. The Jager-Singhe House of Hot Stuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grisha Jager is not a bad father, but he’s not a good one either. Eren sleeps a lot, eats a lot, and misses his girlfriend and boyfriend. Takes place alongside chapter 26.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to remembrance for beta-ing!
> 
> warnings: descriptions of past injury and death, trauma, dysfunctional family, unintentional misgendering, homophobic and transmisogynistic slurs, using other people’s racism against them

Grisha Jager is not an actively bad father. He’s a workaholic and doesn’t know how to relate to his kids. He probably could try harder. But by the time he realised he didn’t know a thing about Mikasa and Eren, they already hated him. 

He would never forget walking into Eren’s hospital room and seeing him almost as pale as his father, unconscious, IVs in his arm, bandages around his head, and knowing his son wouldn’t make it to Carla’s funeral. He would never forget how he came back every day for weeks, only to see Eren asleep every time. Sometimes Mikasa would be in the chair next to him, or Armin would be curled up on the bed beside him, clinging to the arm that wasn’t stuck full of needles and trying his best not to jostle Eren’s ribs. 

They would look at Grisha, and he’d know from their expressions that he was dead to them, because he’d done this to Eren. He’d looked away from the road, he’d run them past a red light, he’d sped through moving traffic. And he’d gotten out of it with a couple scratches. His wife was dead, and his son might never wake up. 

And when Eren did wake up, and Mikasa told him what had happened, again and again until his injured and traumatised brain could hold on to the information, Grisha wasn’t there. He’d come hours later. He worked in that very same hospital, but Eren didn’t want him to know he’d woken up. 

When Grisha did come, Eren was alone. He didn’t say anything. He just stared. 

Most of all, Grisha would never forget that haunted, hateful look Eren gave him. He’d never forget it, because every time Eren looked at him from then on, there was a hint of that hate remaining. 

_You did this. You killed her. You broke me._

He didn’t know his own son or daughter. He didn’t know what they loved. He didn’t know what their grades were. He didn’t know if they had friends besides Armin. He didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives. 

He didn’t know how to ask. 

Nothing changed after the accident, or so Grisha liked to think. He still worked ridiculous hours. He still barely spoke to his kids. He still didn’t understand why they were so invested in the arts. He mourned for his wife, but his life went on, just a little emptier. 

He brought Eren and Mikasa (mostly Eren) to therapy, but he didn’t know what went on in those sessions. When Eren returned to school almost a full year later, Grisha woke him up in the mornings until Eren asked him to stop. He supported his kids’ decisions to apply to Wall College, following in Carla’s footsteps, because what else could he really do? At that point, he was just trying to make sure they didn’t come to hate him more. It would all be okay, he thought. 

But the thing is, everything changed. 

Mikasa had lost every parent she’d ever had; three to death and one to an emotional distance she wasn’t willing to bridge. She’d seen the world take away so much that was dear to her, and it was a miracle that it hadn’t destroyed her, but it had changed her. She held on tight to her brother, protected him with everything she had, because she couldn’t stand to lose him too. 

And Eren had lost so much. Many memories of his childhood were gone, never to return. His head was still, in many ways, broken; the skull fractures were all closed up but the internal damage, like his ill-affected short-term memory, would probably never fully heal, nor would the trauma of losing his mother so young and so violently. Grisha would never know the whole truth about the extent of his trauma, because Eren didn’t trust him with it, and Grisha never asked. 

At the very least, he didn’t start fights with Eren in the car anymore. He almost did, so many times. He would be ready to raise his voice, but then he’d remember Carla, covered in her own blood, her legs twisted and her back bent sideways so unnaturally, shattered glass all over her -- and he’d bite his tongue. The kids could hate him if they wanted to. At least they were alive. 

Grisha Jager is not a bad father. But he’s not a good one either. 

\---

Eren woke to the sound of a text message notification. He lifted his blanket and opened his eyes just a crack; the light burned, and he cocooned himself once more. His phone heralded another text, and he groaned and stuck his hand out, feeling around his night table blindly for it. His hand retreated into the blankets, clasped tightly around his phone, and he checked the wake-up call from Armin. It was a little after noon. Definitely not late enough to get out of bed. 

He hung around in his nice warm nest of blankets and pillows for about an hour before he accepted that more sleep was not forthcoming, and then he got up. 

As soon as he was upright, Eren’s phone went off again, with an alarm he’d set the previous evening reminding him to call Levi. He picked up mid-way through a yawn. 

“ _Hel-- what the fuck?_ ”

“--aaaahn, hi Levi. Sorry. I just woke up.” Maybe he should have waited until he was past the bleary, stumbly stage of post-sleep haze before calling. 

“ _Jesus Christ, kid, I thought you butt-dialed me while jacking off._ ”

“Nope. Missed you.”

“ _How was your trip?_ ”

Eren yawned again in response. 

“ _I’m surprised you’re not with Armin._ ”

“I told you, I just got up.” He looked towards his window. “Agh, the light! It burns!”

“ _Go eat or something. Take a piss. I’ll call you later when you’re not a zombie._ ”

“Mhm. Bye.” Eren made his way towards the stairs feeling his body start the waking-up process.

Breakfast -- lunch? -- was toast and a fried egg and, after some deep thought and a check of the refrigerator, a sliced-up, grilled tomato covered in a kind of unreasonable amount of oregano and the last of the rosemary and cayenne pepper. He had missed spices. College food wasn’t bad, exactly, but it was generally bland. 

“Fucking delicious,” Eren mumbled around a mouthful of food, but since no-one was around to hear it, it sounded perfectly fine to him.

Armin texted him again; she’d gone to visit her parents’ graves and came out to them. It hit Eren, like it had so many times, that he was the only one out of their trio that still had any parents left. Grisha wasn’t much of a dad, but he was still alive. 

But it wasn’t the time to pity his friends. Armin had just taken a big step in her life. He responded: _proud of you. come over?_ He wanted to see her. It had been less than a day, but he missed her. But she declined. 

His dad had left $40 stuck to the refrigerator under a magnet, with a note that he would be back late and if Eren wanted anything in particular to eat over the next week he could use the money and go grocery shopping. Eren decided this was a decent course of action, since he wouldn’t be seeing Armin that day. He checked the freezer for meat (there was very little), and then the spice cabinet before he left; it always needed replenishing, as Grisha never really knew what to get. 

He threw on some proper pants and a shirt and jacket that didn’t smell weird, and he dragged his bike out of the garage. Eren made sure the tire pressure was decent and the plastic crate secured to the back wasn’t in any danger of falling off, and then he took off. 

The store was only a block past his high school, so the ride there gave him the strangest sense of nostalgia; he’d taken this same path almost every day for four years, with almost the same consistency as the mail trucks. It was a Saturday, so the school was empty when he passed, and most of the teenagers in town were probably dicking around with their friends. Their spring break was a week later than Wall’s, but most kids had clocked out mentally by this time of year. 

Eren chained up his bike to the rack outside the grocery store and went in. He grabbed a coupon book out of a stand by the door and took a few minutes to leaf through it; most of the coupons were for snacks and cleaning supplies. While Eren loved his Goldfish crackers, he’d had more than enough of them over the last few months, and he really just wanted some decent cereal and fresh meat and veggies to cook for himself. 

Armed with a basket and a sense of stomach-led purpose, Eren made his way through the aisles. He looked through the fresh vegetables first; fresh was best when Eren cooked, mostly because he really liked cutting them up himself. It was all part of the process. Cooking food was at least as much fun to him as eating it, and the more work it was the more satisfying the end result became. There were tomatoes, celery, mushrooms, and cucumbers already in his house, so he passed over those, instead going for the broccoli, cauliflower, peas, and carrots; he wondered if there were potatoes at the house, and then realised his dad loved starches almost as much as life itself so of _course_ there were potatoes. He grabbed a bunch of bananas and a whole garlic as well and moved on to meats. 

There were a few steaks in the freezer when he’d checked, but Eren preferred cooking chicken, so he got a package of six thighs, as well as some ground turkey. He ducked into the cereal aisle just long enough to grab a box of Cocoa Puffs, and then made his way to his true love, the spices. 

And holy shit, they were buy one get one free. 

He resisted the urge to just grab as many as he could fit in the basket, and instead looked for the ones he’d need most. Basil, cardamom, cinnamon sticks, coriander, cumin, dried chili peppers, fennel, mustard seeds, nutmeg, rosemary, shaved coconut, turmeric, whole cloves... shit, this was probably way over $40… He propped the basket up between his hips and a shelf and started going through the things he’d picked out. The produce would be $20 at least, the meat was another $10, and with all of these spices… 

“How do I go over _every time_?” he mumbled to himself. At least he’d brought his wallet, so he could just pay for the rest on his own. He wasn’t going to go through a vacation without curry, though. Not a chance. 

Eren heard whispers behind him, and then laughter. Not just any laughter; that gross, too-loud snickering that people only did at the expense of others. His blood boiled, and he snapped his head around to see who the _fuck_ was putting some poor bastard through shit --

Oh. 

They were laughing at him. 

Eren glared at the two high schoolers who grinned at him like he was already the victim of some awful prank of theirs. They were only a few feet away and standing in the same aisle as him. “The hell do you want?” he asked. 

“You’re the one with that fag hanging off your arm all the time, right?”

He recognised these kids. They were juniors the last time he saw them, which made them seniors now, with a senioritis-induced superiority complex to boot. They were on the wrestling team, which consistently did well but never got the recognition that football and track and the girls’ volleyball team had. Eren didn’t really know where two guys who spent their afternoons crawling over each other in minimal, very tight clothing got off calling people “fag”, but that was neither here nor there. Eren did not leave that high school only to be sucked back into these jackasses making disgusting comments about Armin. He rolled his eyes and tried to blow them off; he and Armin had long since learned there was no use wasting anger on shit heads like them, though it had taken Eren more than a few fist fights to sort that one out. 

“You fucking him yet?”

“None of your business. Piss off.” Eren turned to leave. He had all his spices anyway. 

“Bet you are. That prissy school must be teaching you some shit for you to fall for a trap like that.”

Eren turned back to them, a fire re-ignited in his eyes. “Don’t you _ever_ talk about Armin like that.” He clenched his fists and glared. God damn it, if Eren was about to take down two disrespectful high-schoolers in a supermarket with a basket full of groceries on his arm he would do so while looking like the second scariest motherfucker to ever set foot in this town. 

“What are you going to do?” one said, cracking his knuckles. “Cook for us?”

Okay, so he hadn’t gotten any more intimidating since going to Wall. Good to know. Time for plan B.

Eren knew exactly thirty-five words in his mother’s language. Some of them translated to “I love you”, “where’s the bathroom?”, and “this tastes like ass”; the rest were spices. But, goddamn, he could say them in the most convincing fresh-off-the-boat stereotypical Indian accent anyone had ever heard, despite that he had never been to India in his life. 

He took a lighter out of his pocket and flicked it on, and then started saying those words at random in a low voice, serious enough to sound like a chant, or a curse. Eren realised he probably looked ridiculous to anyone who knew what the fuck was coming out of his mouth; at one point he was saying “salt” over and over while the high schoolers started to freak out. He threw in a particularly dramatic “Mikasa” at one point, to make it sound like he was summoning her, and he swore he could see their blood run cold. 

“He’s doing some sort of Indian voodoo, let’s get out of here.” 

As soon as the boys had rounded the corner at the end of the aisle, Eren shut off his lighter and pocketed it. He’d always known that thing would come in handy one day. 

But still… to know that kids like that were running around, spewing hateful crap like it was their job to lick toilets clean, calling Armin “fag” or “trap”; it sickened Eren, and knowing he couldn’t do anything to change their minds made it even worse. He had a responsibility, damn it! He swore to protect Armin and he couldn’t even do that. 

Eren sighed and made his way to the check-out; he picked the register with the nice-looking elderly lady at the scanner, and got in line behind a young woman who was buying tampons, Advil, and what appeared to be the candy aisle’s entire stock of chocolate. 

Back home, Eren lost himself to cooking for a few hours; he probably made more than he needed, but hey, he missed this. At one point he tasted his third curry and spent the next few minutes crying into the kitchen sink because holy _shit_ it burned. How many of the dried chili peppers had he crushed in there again? He added some honey and then watered it down a little; there was a difference between pleasantly and devastatingly spicy, and he was already pretty sure he wouldn’t feel his own tongue again for an hour at least. 

And then his cell phone rang. 

Eren checked the caller ID before answering. “Hello, you’ve reached the Jager-Singhe House of Hot Stuff, today’s special is Curry Pompeii, hot as the heart of a volcano --”

“ _I expected you to say the special was you_.”

Eren smiled. “Hi Levi.” He turned down the heat on the stove so he could focus his full attention on his conversation. “Did you miss me?”

“ _Yes he di~id!_ ” said a distant voice that did not sound at all like Levi’s. 

“ _Get out!_ ” Levi shouted. More quietly, as if he’d pulled the phone away from his mouth, came: “ _I thought you left already._ ” He sort of growled into the phone. “ _Sorry. That was my therapist._ ”

“Why are you calling me while your therapist is around?”

“ _He’s one of my best friends, or something. He doesn’t seem to realise that --_ ” Levi pulled the phone away from his mouth again, and shouted, “ _I hate his guts!_ ” A door slammed shut. 

“Sounds like me and Jean. I think we’re friends? But I can barely stand to be around him. He annoys the shit out of me.”

“ _I know the feeling. I did miss you though._ ”

Eren was shocked at the admission. It usually took at least a little prodding to get any feelings out of Levi.

“ _I didn’t actually expect you to pick up. You’re still not with Armin?_ ”

“She’s busy. Besides, I’m cooking.”

“ _So you actually made volcanic curry._ ”

“Yup. My mouth is a little numb from tasting it.” Eren checked on the chicken thighs, which were browning happily in a separate pan. “Why’d you call if you didn’t think I’d pick up?”

“ _Hope, I guess. Tell me about your day._ ”

“Wasn’t that interesting. I went to the store, got harassed by a couple of high-schoolers and scared the shit out of them, got spices, came home and cooked. Did you do anything?”

“ _I was painting until Erwin showed up. He had a day off, said he wanted to talk to me, make sure that, ahem --_ ” he affected a stuck-up voice, deeper and more nasally than his own usually was -- “ _your relationship with the young student is progressing amicably._ ” He snorted. “ _Nosy bastard._ ”

“Why do you stay friends with him if you don’t like him?”

“ _He puts up with my bullshit, and he uses his powers of manipulation for good, at least where I’m concerned. I’d probably be rotting in a gutter somewhere if not for him._ ”

“But you still call him a bastard?”

“ _Absolutely._ ”

“Did you at least get some work done?” Eren tucked his phone between his cheek and shoulder while he cleaned up some of the counters. He’d only used a tiny bit of flour, but somehow it and bits of powdered spices were everywhere. 

“ _Some. I think Hanji is almost done._ ”

“Can’t wait to see it. Do you have your next model?”

“ _Nope._ ” Levi sighed directly into the phone, and Eren winced at the static. “ _Erwin said he’d do it if I need him to, but I’ve already painted him. I don’t like using models more than once. I was going to look at Wall but I haven’t yet. Kept putting it off._ ”

“I could do it.”

There was a short pause. “ _You realise you’re going to have to be completely naked for this, don’t you? Dick and all._ ”

“You realise I’ve wanted to strip down for you since the day I met you, don’t you?”

“ _Don’t get ahead of yourself --_ ”

“A-head.”

“ _Get out._ ”

Eren laughed. He leaned back against the counter nearest the stove, laughing loud enough that he didn’t hear the garage door open, and his eyes shut tight so he didn’t notice it had until his dad was already in the kitchen, eyeing the mess of pots and pans and large knives all scattered across the counters. In fact, it wasn’t until Grisha had already moved beyond the mess and stared bewildered at his son laughing wildly over the phone that Eren opened his eyes and, still giggling at what really wasn’t all that funny of a pun, noticed he was no longer alone. 

“Hi, son,” Grisha said. 

Eren pulled the phone away from his face and mouthed “Hi, Dad,” before returning to his conversation. “Sorry, Levi. It was too good to pass up.”

Grisha dropped his keys in the little key dish by the fridge and almost ran out of the room. He didn’t know who Levi was, but Eren had just smiled at his father for the first time in years, so Grisha decided he liked him. 

\---

Eren soared through the skies, the wind rushing past his face. He’d never get used to the thrill of flight, not ever. He threw his head back and roared as the terrified citizens below unleashed a barrage of crude weapons upon him; arrows couldn’t scratch him, bullets barely tickled, cannons missed him entirely. They tried to launch a net at him but he tore it to shreds in a single motion. No-one could match up to his strength, his speed, his size.

And they were all helpless; he swooped down low and roared again, releasing a stream of fire from his gaping mouth. The houses caught, the weapons caught, the people caught fire and they jumped into the river below to cool themselves. 

The princess upon Eren’s back shrieked with glee. There went every person in her tiny kingdom who had ever done her wrong. 

Eren’s throat rumbled with his own laughter, and in a deep voice he said, “I told you it would be worth it, Princess Armin.” 

As he reached the far edges of the kingdom’s capital, his powerful wings carrying them far with almost no effort at all, he saw one figure in the distance. A lonely warrior, a knight carrying a sword -- and wearing no armour! Why, he was naked!

Eren scoffed his draconic scoff and tossed his head, readying for another blast of fire, but when he came close, he saw the knight kneel before him, his abs rippling like the sea and his thighs quivering like a plucked violin, and throw his sword aside. Eren, curious, came to rest in front of him. 

The knight stood. “I wish to join you, Great Dragon!”

Eren paced around the knight, admiring him from all sides. The knight appeared strong, and his stance implied both resilience and experience, as did the multitude of scars on his skin. He was also very attractive, which Eren appreciated. However, Eren kept his wings folded such that he could protect Armin; he was not willing to risk his new friend. 

“Will you protect me?” Eren asked. 

“Yes,” the knight replied. 

“Will you protect Princess Armin?”

“Yes,” the knight replied again.

“And will you protect yourself?”

“Are you fucked? Of course I will!”

“Then take up your sword,” Eren commanded, “and climb upon my back.”

The knight did so. Once he was situated comfortably behind the princess (or as comfortably as he could be, seeing as he was bare-assed on a scaly dragon), Eren asked him one more thing:

“What is your name?”

“Sir Levi, previously of the House of Cock!”

“You can still be of the House of Cock if you want to,” Armin said. She turned around in her seat and hooked an arm around Sir Levi’s neck, pulling him down into a kiss. 

Eren took to the sky once more, careful not to jostle his riders. He had always been curious if it was possible for two humans to get freaky on his back, and he was about to get his answer when he woke up. 

“Jesus fucking shit,” Eren moaned. He rolled onto his back and yawned. He’d stayed up until past sunrise, and by the colour of the light streaming into his room Eren realised he had slept until nearly sunset. He could hear his dad moving around downstairs, getting ready to leave for his Sunday-to-Monday overnight thing at the hospital. 

Something stirred in his chest as he remembered the dream from which he’d just been rudely torn. It was weird, and kind of confusing, and he had been some sort of human-dragon shapeshifter? And then at the end Armin and Levi had started making out -- that was weird. that was _really_ weird. 

A little voice in Eren’s head that sounded an uncomfortable amount like Annie said _But also… kind of hot…_

Eren crushed the voice. Nope. Nope. Weird. So weird. _Definitely_ weird. Not a thing he desired to happen at all. Nope. 

He wondered if that weird hug before he and Armin left Levi’s apartment had anything to do with the fact that he was dreaming about Armin and Levi about to fuck on top of his dragon self. And then he stopped wondering, because that was a very dangerous path to go down and he really should not be thinking about his two datemates possibly dating each other, should he? 

The Annie-sounding head-voice said _But threesome._

Eren rolled back over and groaned into his pillow. There was no use controlling his thoughts on this one. 

His room was directly over the garage, so Eren heard his dad leave, and after the garage door shut he slithered out of bed and downstairs. He shoved cold curry and vegetables into his mouth, directly from a tupperware that he took out of the fridge. Then he sat down in front of the TV, turned to a really awful sitcom, and contemplated his life in the way that college students tend to do during their brief moments of free time. 

Eren’s thoughts were broken by the trill of his phone. It was Levi again. He picked up, a little confused because he didn’t take Levi to be the kind of guy who called every day. “Levi?”

“ _Is this a bad time?_ ”

“No, just unexpected. I feel like I’ve been talking to you more than I have Armin.”

“ _Am I calling too much?_ ”

“No way. I like hearing from you.” Eren straightened his back a little from his sitcom slump and into a more comfortable recline on the sofa. “What’s up?”

“ _Not much. Painting. I missed you._ ”

Eren was starting to get the feeling there was something behind that _I miss you_ , some hidden meaning that he was totally missing out on. “Are you okay?”

Levi hesitated just a moment too long and Eren started to really worry about him, but then he responded. “ _Generally, yes. But I get some fucked-up thoughts every now and then, when it gets too quiet, and, not to get mushy, your voice is the one I’d most like to fill the silence right now. As much as I might not like people, I think after working with models in person for so long I forgot what it’s like to be alone._ ”

Levi was more honest over the phone, Eren noticed, but he didn’t mention it, because he was pretty sure it was some sort of delicate peculiarity of Levi’s that, like a fairy, should never be pointed out too openly, lest it disappear. Or bite him. “Well, I’m flattered you consider me to be the best silence-filler. It’s kind of cute, hearing that from you.”

“ _Cute? That’s a first,_ ” Levi grumbled. 

“Anything you want me to talk about?”

“ _How was your day?_ ”

“Uh. I woke up, like, half an hour ago. Ate cold curry. I’m watching bad TV right now.”

“ _What kind of bad?_ ”

“Unfunny sitcom bad.” As if to prove his point, a roar of canned laughter erupted from the TV. Eren glared at the screen. He could change the channel, but the remote was over _there_ and he really didn’t want to move. 

“ _I like to call those shitcoms._ ”

“I’m not even a little bit surprised.”

“ _Any interesting dreams before you woke up at sunset?_

Eren wondered if Levi had long-distance mind reading abilities. “...Yeah.”

“ _What about?_ ”

How could he explain it without actually explaining it? “Dragons,” Eren said, except his voice pitched up at the end so it sounded more like “Dragons?” He scratched a sudden itch on his face. “I don’t really wanna talk about it,” he mumbled. 

“ _That’s fine._ ” It didn’t sound fine. 

“I could, I don’t know, sing for you instead.”

“ _Sure, why not? You have a nice voice. I’m kind of in the mood for some Elton John._ ”

Eren eyed the electric piano in the corner with interest. Okay, so he’d have to get off his ass for this; worth it though. He shut the TV and went to the piano, then put his phone on speaker. “Hey Levi, did you know I took piano lessons for six years?”

“ _Dear God. You might be almost as multi-talented as I am._ ”

The piano still felt familiar, though Eren hadn’t practiced even once since he left for college. The plastic keys were a little slimy with dust and moisture, but he ignored it and stretched out his fingers, immediately beginning to play the opening notes of his chosen song. 

_Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band_  
_Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man_  
_Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand_  
_And now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand_

“ _You’re a dork,_ ” Levi said in a break between lines. 

“I’m your dork!” Eren responded, nearly missing a cue. “ _When I say softly,_ ” he whispered, and then loudly he dragged out “ _slowly!_ ” far beyond its intended duration. 

Levi laughed into the phone. It was just a short chuckle -- more a snort, really -- but it was the most genuine laughter Eren had ever heard out of him. It made him smile and he threw himself into the chorus with even more enthusiasm than before. 

“ _How sweet,_ ” Levi said when he finished, and it didn’t sound like sarcasm. Then he laughed again, that same genuine laugh but for more than the half-second Eren got to enjoy it earlier. Eren felt like he was floating; he was pretty sure hearing Levi laugh like this was some sort of special treat only offered to people who were particularly important to him or something. 

Then, without warning, Levi’s quiet laughter turned to an angry grunt, and the call ended. 

“Levi?” Eren said, as if his phone’s home screen would answer him. He tried calling back; no answer. He called again, and again, and one more time until Levi texted him: _Stop calling._

Eren sat on the sofa with his phone cradled in his hands. Something happened, but he didn’t know what, and now he couldn’t even ask Levi what was wrong. He felt cold, as cold as the curry he’d eaten not fifteen minutes earlier, and empty as if he hadn’t eaten it at all. 

“Fuck,” Eren said, and once more: “Fuck!” He fell to the side and faceplanted into a sofa cushion, clutching his call phone tight in one hand and the centre of his chest with the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eren's song is [Tiny Dancer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBWfUc5jKiM) by Elton John


	28. All of Levi’s Friends Are Full of Shit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re actually not full of shit, he just wants to think they are when they disagree with him. Because he’s stubborn like that. It would be less of a problem if they didn’t know him so well. Concurrent to 26 and 27.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always you can follow my tumblr at [nouveauqueer](http://nouveauqueer.tumblr.com) for information about updates and all the things i do with my life that aren't this fic. 
> 
> warnings: unlearning transantagonism, mentioned side pairing and past drug use/addiction, more of Erwin than I ever expected to write. unbeta'd chapter because i kind of just wanted to get it out there.

Levi did not sleep in late when he felt like shit. He woke up at the sound of his alarm like a responsible adult (actually, like a person who generally followed a very strict schedule out of necessity to retain what was left of his relative sanity). He got out of bed, bore with the cold for an hour to run his usual six miles at dawn, and when the sky was more blue-white than yellow he returned home and took a scalding shower. He ate breakfast. He took a multivitamin. He released the wide yawn he’d been holding back for the last few hours. 

And then he painted. 

The portrait of Hanji was coming along well, and faster than he had expected. By the time classes started again Levi would probably need a new model for a new painting. He should have started looking already. 

Around noon he made (read: microwaved) lunch and answered a very sleepy phone call from his boyfriend. And then he painted more.

Levi was certain the only reason he was able to work so fast was because painting naked people was second-nature to him at this point. This work was so much more intimate than any others had ever been. He’d done close-ups of genitals, decontextualised and hyper-realistic, like it was no big thing, because it wasn’t. He’d always said: a dick was a dick, a cunt was a cunt, a nipple was a nipple, an ass was an ass, and paint could be anything. But this was… context, and care, and Hanji trusting him to respect them even as he exposed them for the world to see. It was unnerving, doubly so because Hanji wasn’t even there to correct him. 

He wasn’t sure if he deserved their trust, but every time Hanji visited they looked at the painting and smiled. Hanji knew better than him, and Hanji never held back when they had a problem with him. 

Speaking of Hanji, Levi’s front door opened. 

Levi groaned. He didn’t _really_ mind Hanji coming around, but acting eternally annoyed at people he liked was kind of his thing. “Can’t you ever call before you show up?”

“I did call.” Erwin’s voice. Not Hanji’s. Levi was now even more annoyed. “Your phone went straight to voicemail.”

Levi checked his phone where it rested on the table next to him. It was dead. How did that happen?

“Did you really let your phone run out?”

“Guess so.” Levi rested his palette and tugged off his latex gloves. He usually plugged in his phone after his run while he showered. He must have forgotten. The charger was on the kitchen counter, but not plugged into the wall outlet; Levi hooked it up. “What are you doing here?”

“Haven’t seen you in a few weeks. How are you doing?”

“You’re not my mom.” Levi flopped down on his couch. 

Erwin sat a little more gently on the armchair that was in the same place as His Chair used to be when he lived here. “No, but I am your therapist. If you won’t make an appointment during a very trying time in your life, then it’s my responsibility to make sure you’re still okay.”

“You were less annoying when you were just a psychiatrist.” And infinitely less annoying when they were undergrads and reluctant weirdo friends, but Levi never really called anyone his friend out loud, even if it was true, so he didn’t say that. “I’m fine. I’m busy, as usual, but I’m fine.”

Erwin didn’t believe him, but he had time to let it go. It was his day off, and he had all day to pester Levi. He took a look at Levi’s painting. “Is that…?”

“Hanji. Yeah.”

“Huh.” He considered the painting for a few moments before looking away. “I feel like I’m seeing something private. I never get that from your work.”

“It’s a new series. It’s… different. It’s about gender, sort of.” Levi hadn’t ever talked about it at length and he wasn’t sure he yet had the words to. There was also the possibility that, after this painting was finished, Hanji would find it distasteful and the series would never see the light of day and he wouldn’t ever need to talk about it. 

For some reason, that possibility didn’t bother him. He knew this series was the least unique work he’d ever come up with; there weren’t an endless amount of artworks about gender variation, but the ones that did exist always focussed either on clothing or nudity. Clothing wasn’t part of his style, but the endless artful nudity of trans people had always seemed kind of disrespectful to him. They were reduced to their scars and their genitals, often without even the extension of respect to include their faces, to humanise them. His paintings of genitals in the past had been just that -- decontextualised. But not gendered. Named, but not gendered. 

At the very least, the context of a face and a characteristic stance was a little more respectful. He hoped. 

Erwin had gone back to staring at the painting and the printed photographs around the edges of the canvas and littered on the floor. “I’ve known Hanji’s sex for a while, from paperwork, but I’ve never thought about what she would actually look like. I guess I always assumed Hanji was sort of a Ken doll.” 

“Me too. I didn’t know their sex, though.” 

Erwin nodded slowly and finally looked away from the painting completely. “How are you really doing?”

“Isn’t this your day off?”

“Don’t deflect.”

Levi’s frown twitched into a scowl. “I’m fine, I told you.”

“Hmm. How’s Eren?”

“Home. It’s spring break. He’s probably rolling around with his girlfriend.”

“Does that bother you?”

“No,” Levi answered honestly. Erwin didn’t say anything, which was an indication that he wanted Levi to say more about it. “It doesn’t. I’m happy he’s living his life outside of me. The only thing that bothers me is that I don’t want to fuck him. Or, I do, but… not the way I usually do. I want to, hypothetically, but when it comes to actually real-life fucking him I don’t know if it’s what I want.”

If Erwin was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Does he know that?”

“Yeah. I told him.”

“Why does it bother you?”

“I _always_ want sex. That’s just who I am; you know that. I have sex with people without giving a shit. The only people I’ve ever met that I thought were attractive but didn’t want to fuck are you and Hanji.”

Erwin’s thick eyebrows raised. “That’s interesting.” He squinted his eyes a little, putting Levi under the microscope again, this time without his glasses because he left them at home. 

“Don’t try to push that fear of commitment shit on me again. You know it’s not true.”

“I know. That’s not it.” Erwin crossed his legs, getting into his Thinking Pose. “Could it be that you don’t want to have sex with someone if you feel an emotional connection?”

“That’s kind of fucked up.”

“Not necessarily. You certainly wouldn’t be alone.”

“If you say so. I don’t think that’s it though. I do want to fuck him. I don’t think I’m ready though.” Levi’s head was starting to hurt, and he really didn’t want to talk about it. It made him feel like a teenager to say he “wasn’t ready” for sex. 

“Are you waiting for something?”

“Maybe. Do we have to talk about this?” He didn’t want Erwin to psychoanalyse his currently non-existent sex life. 

“The things you don’t want to talk about tend to be the things you need most to talk about, so yes. And you were the one who brought it up. You must think it’s important.” 

“Well, what could I be waiting for?”

“I know you have some reservations about his age.”

“That’s not it. And it’s not that I’m a teacher, either.” Sure, it was still strange and new to him, and it was definitely questionable at best, but he’d been ready to jump into bed with Eren at the very beginning, when all he knew was Eren’s face, the student handbook from a decade ago, and the knowledge that, if anything, teacher-student relationships had become even more taboo since then. 

“Are you waiting until you love him?” It was a long shot with Levi, to be sure, but common enough otherwise that Erwin threw it out there anyway. 

“Why would I be waiting for _that_? I’ve never been in love. I don’t even know if I can.”

“Have you thought about it? About if you could love him.”

“Well, yeah.”

Maybe it wasn’t such a long shot after all. “And could you?”

“Maybe.” Yes. Yes, _definitely_. “Still not likely though.” Very likely, actually, maybe even inevitable, and Levi was pretty sure Erwin could tell he was lying to him. Levi turned on his side to better look at Erwin. “Why does this interest you so much?”

“I’m your therapist. If you talk about it, it interests me.”

“No. Bullshit. I know you. There’s something else.”

Erwin rubbed his face, his fingers catching on the stubble he hadn’t bothered to deal with that morning, while he thought about how to phrase it. “I feel like I recognise this.”

“What, from your own life?”

“Yes.”

“Is it Mike?”

Erwin nodded. “For two years he kept telling me he wasn’t ready to sleep with me. And I waited, because I liked him, and then I loved him. And one day he just looked at me and said he loved me, and, well…” He smirked. It kind of made Levi feel ill. 

“I don’t need to know about your sexcapades, thanks.” 

“I’m just mentioning it because you asked. He did always say he thought he had something in common with you, but he wouldn’t say what it was.”

“I don’t think it’s this.” Not that it was impossible they had some sort of weird feelings about sex in common, but Levi was pretty sure this wasn’t what Mike was talking about. 

“That’s fine. It really could be anything; it was just an idea. Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking when you decide not to pursue him sexually?”

Could he have worded it any more awkwardly? “I just think that I’m not ready.”

“Anything else?”

Levi thought about it more. “I want to be sure. I don’t want to fuck this up. I don’t want to fuck him up.”

“When you say you ‘don’t want to fuck this up’, what do you mean by ‘this’?”

“Our relationship, I guess.”

“Why would sex fuck it up?”

“It always does. Every time I try to date someone it ends badly, and they always bring up how I’m so sex-crazed in their reasons why they want to leave.” They weren’t wrong. He was a little…. _eager_ , to say the least. 

“That’s never stopped you before. What’s different?”

“I care more.”

Erwin was silent. Not in the you-should-talk-more way, but in the I’m-shocked-you-said-that way. There was a big difference. 

“What?” Levi asked. 

“I’ve never heard you say something like that so easily. You don’t even say you care about me or Hanji without some prodding and we’ve known you for years.” Erwin smiled in that sort of scarily pretty way he did when he was particularly pleased with something. “You really like him a lot.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Levi shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. “It’s true though. I care about him and I care about our relationship a lot more than I’m used to. I don’t want him to leave me just because he can’t keep up with how much I’d want to fuck him.”

“Do you really think he’ll leave you?”

“No. Not for that. He likes me too much.” More than he should, really, but Levi couldn’t exactly judge. He cared too much, too. 

“So you already know that’s an irrational worry. You know how to work with those.”

“I do.”

“There’s something else, then.” 

Levi shrugged. 

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“It’s not really relevant.” But, of course, Erwin wanted him to answer anyway. So he did. “Last night. He and his girlfriend were here for dinner before they left for home.”

“And how was that?”

“Awkward. Not because of her. It was… I had seen Eren earlier, and he smelled like smoke.”

“I don’t suppose you mean burning-wood-smoke.”

“No.” He grimaced. “Fuck. I blew up at him. You found me crying like a baby over a heroin withdrawal, and I got worked up over stale pot smell. He didn’t even smoke, he was just around his friends when they did, but the smell just… made me remember.” Levi shifted again. He didn’t like talking about it. “ _He_ always smelled like that.” 

Erwin nodded; he needed no elaboration. “Did you explain it to Eren?”

“Sort of. Not enough. I want to talk about it more when he gets back. He deserves to know.” Levi felt a dull ache in his thigh, the leftover memory of needles and tourniquets long past. He shook himself. “There was also the fact that last time we were all in my apartment together, Armin and I traded off kissing Eren and she almost sucked his dick.”

“Almost?”

Levi shrugged. “I asked her not to.” Maybe it was more related than he thought. He met Erwin’s eyes, and from the smile Erwin gave him, Levi could tell he thought the same. 

“You seem to be doing rather well on the communication front, from what I can tell. Even if you haven’t told him everything, you want to.” Erwin paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. “I’m not saying you have to sleep with him. Plenty of people just don’t have sex with their partners at all. But I know you, and you said it yourself -- you want to, but there’s something in the way. If it bothers you, then there must be a solution. You need to know what it is that’s in the way, though, before you can find the solution for it.”

Levi nodded slowly. “I’ll keep thinking about it.” That was the end of that. 

“What else has happened recently?”

“With Eren or in general?”

“Both.”

“I had a few panic attacks since I saw you last. Eren… actually brought me down from them. I guess he has experience with them. I’m feeling better now, though. I think it was just stress.”

“Isolated incidents aren’t usually something to worry about, but let me know if it happens again.”

“Yeah.” Levi started to tap his foot subconsciously. Should he mention it, or…? “Eren’s girlfriend.”

“What about her?”

How to say it… “She said she wants to be my friend. Which is really weird, first of all. I’m not exactly a friendly person. But I’m also not sure she meant that.”

“Do you have a reason not to believe her?”

“Not really. It’s just that she seems… comfortable around me,” Levi said. He fidgeted a little. 

“Friends should be comfortable around one another. You, me, and Hanji aren’t exactly the norm.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?” Erwin definitely did, but it always helped to have Levi spell it out for him. 

Levi sighed. “She acts like she wants to fuck me.” He sighed again. “I mean, all she did was sit in my office for two hours, totally silent, and then sleep in my bed for a whole day while she was sick, and then hug me and kiss me on the cheek. Could mean anything. Maybe I’m reading it all wrong, you know how I am.”

“I do know how you are, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong. Does it bother you that she might show that kind of interest in you?”

“...Yes and no. I don’t know what I’d do about it if she asked me, and I don’t think she will anyway. But I’m bothered… more for her sake, I think.”

“How so?”

“Well.” Levi turned the words over in his head before speaking slowly. “She’s trans. I respect that, you know, but I don’t know if I’d be able to still think of her that way -- you know, as a girl -- with her clothes off. I like to think I would, but I know how much I fuck up in my head with Hanji now, and hell, with Armin too and I’ve never seen her naked. I don’t think it’d be fair to her to be with someone who can’t see her for who she is.”

“I think that’s a noble way of thinking about it.”

“Jesus, am I noble now?”

Erwin chuckled. “Progress happens in the most unexpected of ways. Anyway, it’s noble, but perhaps an unfounded fear. You’ve been with trans people before, haven’t you?”

“For a night. And I don’t want to lump them all together like that. Besides, this is different; she’s not exactly the kind of person to go looking for a casual fuck when she already has a boyfriend.” 

“Fair. I think you’re getting ahead of yourself in this case. She hasn’t clearly said she’s interested in you, so it may not even be necessary to be so concerned about this.”

Levi grit his teeth and kneaded his palms into his eyes. “It is, though. I’m fucking up her pronouns all the time. I’m really pissed off about it. And I know it’s my problem, not hers. I don’t want it to become her problem. I mean, fuck, she and Eren stayed over here and we all shared my bed and when I looked over at them, all I could think about was how now we have something in common.”

“...What?” 

“As in, we’re both guys who like to wear dresses sometimes. But she’s _not_ a guy.”

The tight knot in Erwin’s chest released. “ _Oh_ , oh my God, I thought you were going to come out to me.”

“What? No.” Levi sat up. “Nooo, that’s not --”

“Can you really blame me for thinking that?”

Levi thought it over for a moment. Between his own genderfucking tendencies and his habit of passively attracting trans people into his circle of acquaintances, maybe Levi ought to have considered it himself once or twice. “I guess not, but no, that was an example of how shitty of a person I am.”

Erwin opened his mouth to reply. 

“Nope. Shut up.” Levi’s hands curled into fists. “Your words of comfort don’t mean shit right now. It’s a shitty thing to think about someone.” 

“I don’t disagree with you.” Erwin employed his Calming Voice to try and placate Levi’s anger. “Are you working on fixing it?”

“Yeah. Obviously.”

“Then that’s all you can do.” Erwin stared at Levi. “You’re going around in circles, aren’t you?”

Levi flopped back down on the couch. Instead of an answer, he asked, “How do you think Eren would feel about this? You know, if she actually wanted me that way.”

“You know him better than I do.”

“Not that well,” Levi mumbled. He turned towards the back of the couch, effectively ending the conversation. 

He’d accomplished less than Erwin hoped. 

“Please try and make regular appointments,” Erwin urged. “I’d like to talk with you about this more.”

“You just want my money,” Levi grumbled. 

“Remember when I paid for half of your part of the rent?” 

“I was basically your maid. I made up for it.” Levi turned back around, now that the conversation had moved on. “I’ll pay you for today, don’t worry.”

“You don’t have to --”

Levi gave a silencing glare. Erwin shut the fuck up. 

“I’ll take my Friday morning slot back, if it’s still open,” Levi said. 

“Of course it is. I wouldn’t get up that early on a Friday if I didn’t have to.”

“Good. That’s over.” Levi stretched out, balancing his elbows and feet on opposite arms of the sofa. “So can we shoot the shit now without you psychoanalysing me?”

“Aw, did you miss me?” Erwin teased. 

“Like that. Don’t do that.”

They ended up talking over dinner; Erwin cooked, Levi hovered over him and cleaned while he worked, mostly being a nuisance. He didn’t actually feel compelled to clean every single drop of water off the counter immediately as it spilled, but he wanted to annoy Erwin, and knocking into his arm while he cut up vegetables was one way to do it. 

“You’re annoying, you know that?” Erwin asked. 

“No shit,” Levi answered. 

\---

After dinner, Levi shooed Erwin out and decided it was time to call Eren back. He couldn’t help but smile at Eren’s flirtatious, curry-themed greeting, but he scowled as Erwin let himself back in. He mimed that he was looking for his keys; Levi would have bet his right nut that Erwin left them behind on purpose, and his prediction was more or less verified when Erwin loudly interrupted his conversation. 

Levi glared at him; just because he had his phone on loud enough for Erwin to hear didn’t mean he was welcome to join in. 

For some reason, talking to Eren both calmed and excited Levi. It felt good, like this was something he was meant to do. He was even comfortable enough to admit that he missed Eren. 

However, the conversations he needed to have with Eren, the apologies he needed to dig up from under the many walls he’d put up within himself to keep up the appearance of being an aloof asshole, loomed over his head. He probably should say something -- “I shouldn’t have flipped out on you about the pot thing” or at least “we should talk when you get back” but oh god no not the second one, Levi hated hearing that from anyone else so he wasn’t about to spout it out. 

Eren seemed chipper enough, so Levi searched around for a dry erase marker and wrote “talk to Eren” directly on his stainless steel freezer door. 

_Stainless my ass,_ he thought. That thing stains easier than anything else.

Eren asked if he had his next model lined up, and Levi turned to his nearly finished painting of Hanji. From this angle the acrylic paint caught the light in the most unflattering of ways, making it look plastic and artificial, but maybe that was the point. He cocked his head to the side, thinking it over while he murmured something about not wanting to paint Erwin again, maybe checking out Wall…

“ _I could do it_ ,” Eren offered. 

Levi’s thoughts came to a halt. He licked his lips. “You realise you’re going to have to be completely naked for this, don’t you? Dick and all.”

“ _You realise I’ve wanted to strip down for you since the day I met you, don’t you?_ ”

Jesus fucking shit. Levi slid down the wall that he had conveniently been leaning against, and he tried to swallow the lump in his throat as quietly as possible. With great effort, he managed not to stutter: “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“ _A-head_.”

Levi could _hear_ the smirk, he just knew Eren was proud as fuck for that shitty dick pun, and completely oblivious to the way Levi’s entire body was heating up at the prospect of having Eren butt-naked in his house, in front of Levi for his eyes to drink in like the finest wine to grace the Earth; how could he ever remain professional? 

“Get out,” Levi said, and it was only slightly directed at the pun. 

Eren laughed, and something in Levi’s chest twisted. He dragged his hand down his face. 

_I am so utterly fucked_ , he thought, because he felt dizzy and weightless and he was starting to understand why people called it “falling” in love.


	29. I'm Not In Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not yet, at least. But I’m definitely getting there. (Still concurrent to 26/27)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyo~! i found out recently some people have been recommending this fic, which is great! i also found out some people are rec'ing it as ereri -- not so great. please please please, if you're going to recommend _orange_ , say it is ererimin or eren/levi/armin. it's not exclusively ereri, and at no point in writing it have i ever intended it to be so. 
> 
> chapter warnings: mentions of past drug use and future buttsex

Levi stayed on the kitchen floor for a while. His phone rested loose in his hand, the call with Eren long since ended. 

He should talk to someone. At one point he considered calling someone but in the end he just stayed still, curled up against the wall between the dishwasher and the fridge, thinking about the nineteen-year-old cinnamon roll sprinkled with fucking sunshine who had quite literally made him fall on the ground with a shock of something Levi could only call the stirrings of love. Love, which, until he met Eren, was not something Levi ever intended or _expected_ to feel for anyone other than his siblings. 

“Falling in love,” they said. Yeah, he was definitely falling. It was making him dizzy and for a while he wasn’t precisely certain which way he was facing because nothing felt like it was up or down. He was in free-fall and he was so completely unprepared to terminal velocity his way right into Eren’s heart. 

God, that was sappy. 

Levi kind of wanted a drink but he also wasn’t entirely certain he’d have the will to stop himself before he’d need to be hospitalised.

_I’m so not ready for this._

He groaned and laid out on the ground; here he was, a thirty year old man afraid of falling in love but falling for a fucking teenager anyway. 

His phone rang. Perhaps against his better judgment he swiped to take the call and slapped the phone against his face without checking who it was. “What?”

“ _It’s Petra._ ”

“Again, what?”

The line filled with static like she was sighing into the phone. “ _I wanted to see if you were free to hang out but it seems you’re being pissy today._ ”

“Fuck you.”

“ _Want to talk about it?_ ”

“No.”

“ _I’ll be over in twenty minutes._ ”

“Thanks.” Trust Petra to know the difference between wanting and needing to talk about it. 

Motivated by the prospect of more human contact, Levi finally got up off the floor and by the time Petra arrived he’d cut up all the fruit in his kitchen just for something to do. He wasn’t actually hungry -- he’d just had dinner. But why the hell not? If Petra didn’t eat it he could just… make a fruit salad or something?

“You’re a fruit salad,” he grumbled to himself, slicing through a banana at high speed. 

He’d left the door unlocked after Erwin left, so Petra pushed her way in and dropped a plastic bag on his table. “You look like shit,” she said. 

“Thanks.” Levi viciously sliced an apple in half. “I have beer, red, white, tequila --”

“I’m nineteen.”

“I know. Do you want a drink or not?”

“No thanks. What happened?” She sat down at his table and opened the bag, revealing a few pints of ice cream. 

Levi covered the fruit and stuck it in the fridge; if there was ice cream, no fruit would be consumed. He grabbed spoons. He sat down. He still hadn’t said anything by that point, so Petra asked again. 

“What happened?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it.” He picked up one of the ice cream tubs. “Cinnamon Buns and Cheesecake Brownie? You really love me.”

Petra kept the Banana Peanut Butter for herself and left the rest to Levi. “At least tell me something. We don’t have to talk about it in depth.”

“Eren. That enough?” He stuffed a spoonful in his mouth. “Jesus, this is good.”

“Oh, honey. Are you finally falling in love with him?”

Levi choked a little. 

“It’ll be okay.” She cracked open her pint and dug in. 

“You knew already, didn’t you? Somehow.”

“Duh. Why do you think I brought ice cream?” Petra laughed. “So what happened?”

“I don’t know. I called him. He laughed at some shitty pun. I felt like all my organs disappeared.” He scowled at his ice cream. “Is that how… _love_... is supposed to feel?”

“Sounds about right. At least for the first time you notice. Sometimes it gets easier; sometimes it doesn’t and you eat ice cream for dinner every night for a month. Are you going to tell him?”

“Fuck no.” 

“ _Levi_.”

“Not yet. I’m not… I don’t think I’m totally in love with him yet.”

“But you’re getting there?”

Levi shrugged. “I think I always was.” He stared down at the wood grain of the table, trying to follow it with his eyes. There was a crumb; how did he miss that? He reached out a finger to wipe it up, then stretched out toward the garbage and brushed it off. 

“You’re really cute, you know?”

Levi winced. “I am not.”

She didn’t fight him, though she still definitely thought he was cute. “Can I kiss you?” Petra asked. 

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. I kind of just wanted to. It’s fine if you’d rather not.” 

“I… don’t think so.” He hadn’t ever really talked about that sort of thing with Eren; did he need permission before kissing someone else? Did he need to let Eren know at all? That was another thing they’d have to talk about. And Erwin thought they had good communication… 

Petra didn’t appear bothered by it. She shrugged. “I tried.”

He wondered if he should tell Eren about what Armin had done. It was just a kiss on the cheek, and Levi didn’t even know if it was supposed to mean anything, but he had a feeling it did and Eren would probably want to know. Wouldn’t he?

“What’s eating you?” Petra asked, a little started by the rapidly darkening expression on Levi’s face. 

“Just need to talk to Eren about some things.”

“What kind of things? If you don’t mind telling.”

“Drug history. The possibility of external relationships. Armin kissed me goodbye on Friday and I don’t know how to take that. Those sorts of things.”

“So you’ll let Armin kiss you, but not me?” Petra pouted.

“It was on the cheek, and I didn’t know she was going to do it. I need to talk to her about that too.” He leaned back in his chair, his head flopping over the back. “God, what’s with all these nineteen-year-olds wanting to kiss me?”

Petra snorted a laugh. 

“Relationships are hard.”

Petra lifted her ice cream. “I’ll toast to that.” Levi lifted his own cup and knocked it against hers. 

\---

Levi painted all day on Sunday, hoping to distract himself from how much he desperately needed to talk to Eren about All The Things, but in the end he caved and called Eren again that evening.

“ _Levi?_ ”

And immediately chickened out. 

“Is this a bad time?” he asked, and then mentally slapped himself. 

“ _No, just unexpected. I feel like I’ve been talking to you more than I have Armin._ ”

That felt like a punch to the gut. “Am I calling too much?”

Eren’s reply was instantaneous, and with not a hint of exaggeration. “ _No way. I like hearing from you. What’s up?_ ”

“Not much.” He paused. He should at least make it sound like he had a life. “Painting.” Well, that was his job. It was what he’d done all day, even if Hanji looked basically exactly the same as they had when he sat down in the morning. “I missed you.” Ooh, Levi was boring _and_ sappy. He considered taking up permanent residence under a rock. 

“ _Are you okay?_ ”

That was a loaded question. A loaded question with far too many answers. “Generally, yes.” Okay, that was more or less true. _Good start,_ he told himself. _Keep going, Levi._ “But I get some fucked-up thoughts every now and then, when it gets too quiet, and, not to get mushy, your voice is the one I’d most like to fill the silence right now. As much as I might not like people, I think after working with models in person for so long I forgot what it’s like to be alone.”

Levi was definitely paying attention to Eren but when he said “cute” everything just sort of flew away. 

“Cute? That’s a first.” Coming from Eren, anyway. 

The worst part was Levi could sort of understand where he was coming from. _Your voice is the one I’d most like to fill the silence right now. I forgot what it’s like to be alone._ God damn it, he was cute. And Eren saying it didn’t make him feel as weird as anyone else. He shrank away from Petra when she said it, but with Eren it didn’t feel condescending or judgmental. Levi had no reason to feel like Eren was going to pity or coddle him. It was just an observation. 

_Do I trust him?_ Levi thought. He didn’t trust very many people. Then again, if he did trust them, it didn’t take long to reach that point, did it? 

He was comfortable, that was for sure. Comfortable enough that mindless banter didn’t bore him, enough that he was kind of disappointed Eren didn’t want to explain his dream, enough that he wanted Eren to sing for him and didn’t even care that the phone reduced the sound quality horribly. 

The song wasn’t about him. Levi had suggested Elton John because he liked him, not because he thought there was a single song in that vast discography do describe their relationship. It didn’t surprise him that Eren would pick something that sounded so disgustingly cheesy that it could only be for Armin. So he laughed. 

He laughed because it was cute, because he was half in love with Eren and it was driving him up a wall, because he and Armin were so perfect together and that also drove him up a wall, because he wanted to be a part of that, because Armin probably had a thing for him too --

The laugh turned into some sort of growl. Levi threw his phone across the room, completely forgetting he was still on a call, and he heard the screen shatter against the far wall despite the supposedly shatterproof film cover on its face. 

He hadn’t completely killed the phone, as Levi realised when it vibrated a few moments later. He let it go to voicemail, and then again every other time Eren called him until he got pissed off at the sound of it buzzing and rattling on the floor and texted Eren back on the unbroken bottom half of the screen to stop calling him. Levi couldn’t deal with it. Not now. 

He left the phone there on the floor and went to bed. 

\---

Sleep didn’t come for Levi. Of course not. His thoughts rattled around in his head, all screaming for attention, and he tried to ignore them but it was impossible. And it made him angry. 

Angry? He did an assessment of his body’s physical abnormalities. Elevated heart rate. Burning feeling under his skin. Deep, clear breaths. Tense, but still, not shaking. 

Anger, not fear. He wasn’t panicking. He really was angry. Angry at himself. Angry at Eren. Angry at Armin. Angry at Erwin and Petra and Hanji and probably every single person he had contacted, ever. Because it had all led up to this confusion. His entire past was coming back. He’d need to dig it up and lay it all out and pick it apart and why, _why_ was he feeling this? All of this? _Any_ of this? Why was he drawn to two college students who were nothing like him, who probably couldn’t handle life with him, who deserved better than some creepy old man trying to figure out what love is? 

He hated Petra for telling him it was okay because she was Eren’s age and with an older guy than Levi. He hated Erwin for telling him he had nothing to worry about as long as he treated Eren well. He hated Hanji for telling him to go for it at all. 

He hated Hannes for worrying about Eren, for not trusting Levi. He hated Mikasa for threatening him. 

He hated himself. 

He went to the kitchen, thinking that maybe some tea would help him calm down. There was some chamomile in the back of his pantry; it might even help him sleep. He put the water on to boil. 

His phone rang. It was still in the kitchen, rattling on the floor, the top half cracked but not as badly as he remembered. 

It wasn’t a number he recognised -- and it was also after midnight. “Who the fuck?” he grumbled into the speaker. 

“ _You asshole._ ”

“Armin?!” No. Not now. He almost threw his phone again. 

“ _Yeah._ ” She was pissed. Which was fine. Levi didn’t blame her. “ _I don’t know what you’re angry about. Eren doesn’t know what he did wrong and from what he told me I can’t tell either. Only you know why you’re mad. Talk to him._ ”

 _I can’t. I **can’t**_. Levi willed himself not to freak out, breathing slowly. “Right now?” 

“ _No; in a week, after he’s given up all hope of ever getting to so much as hold your hand again. Yes, now._ ”

Not possible. Not even a little bit possible. Levi was way too high-strung, too angry -- but who was he really angry at?

Was he really angry at his friends for telling him to go for something they thought would make him happy? No. He _was_ happy. They knew him well enough to expect that. He couldn’t blame them for wanting what was best for him. And Petra especially. She spoke from experience. 

Was he really angry at Hannes and Mikasa for trying to protect Eren? No. They had every right. Because there were issues, really big fucking issues with their relationship and he had to tell himself all too often to be careful, to not push Eren into anything even if Levi was usually the one lagging behind. 

Was he really angry at Armin? Of course not. She could confuse the fuck out of him all she wanted with her vague half-flirting that could mean goddamn anything. But he had no reason to be angry about that, especially if any reasonable review of his recent actions stated he was, however unconsciously, flirting back at least a little. 

Was he really angry at Eren? No. Eren had never done a damn thing wrong. 

“Wait,” Levi called out. He was pretty sure Armin was about to hang up. “I’m not mad at him; I’m annoyed with myself.” 

He could try to blame it on others all he wanted but the truth was that the only person Levi could honestly blame for any of what he was feeling was himself. He was the one who ultimately made his decisions. And even if he didn’t know what to do about the mess he’d gotten himself into, he was the only one who’d put himself there. No-one had manipulated him into it. No-one had forced him. 

“ _Good to know, but again, don’t take it out on him. You know he deserves better. He’s giving you his best, so don’t leave him in the dark like this. And he’s the one you need to tell, not me._ ”

“Yeah. You’re right. I’ll talk to him. Bye.”

He hung up before he heard Armin’s response. _Deep breaths. Deep breaths. You’re an adult, Levi, you can do this. You can talk to your boyfriend._

He ended up calling Eren through Facetime; these were conversations better suited for when they were together, but at least being able to see each other through a video call was the next best thing. 

Eren had the most adorable bedhead, and he looked so hopeful when he answered Levi’s call. His face was broken up by the spiderweb cracks on the phone’s screen. Levi’s heart twisted. 

“ _Hi Levi._ ”

A flood of words lodged itself painfully in Levi’s throat. He stared at his phone, lips twitching. 

“ _What’s wrong?_ ”

Levi forced himself not to look away. _Say something!_ he thought. “I don’t know where to start,” he admitted. 

“ _Why did you hang up on me before?_ ”

“Honestly?” He steeled himself, because this was something he’d have to tear pretty violently out of himself. It would make everything else easier. “I’m falling in love with you, and I don’t know how to deal with that.”

Eren was silent for a while. Levi didn’t bother him; he had a feeling that was a lot to take in. 

After a while, Eren mumbled something into the phone that Levi missed entirely. 

“What?” Levi asked.

“ _I had no idea,_ ” Eren repeated. 

“Neither did I. It kind of fucked me up for a while. It’s still fucking me up. You’re so young -- and yeah, I know I said that didn’t bother me anymore, and I’m sure you’re getting tired of hearing it. I can’t pretend it doesn’t have any effect.”

“ _I understand. _” Eren looked heartbroken. “ _If… if you want to leave, that’s--_ ”__

__“That’s not what I meant. I’m telling you this because I want to work through it with you.”_ _

__Eren sighed in relief. “Okay. Great. I want us to try and work it out.”_ _

__“That’s not all though.” Levi took a deep breath. “I know it’s late, but I have a lot I need to tell you. I don’t know if it makes sense to wait any longer.”_ _

__“ _Well, I’m awake. I’ll listen._ ”_ _

__So Levi talked. He talked until his throat dried up, and then he got himself a glass of water and kept talking. He got through his issues with sex (both in the general wanting to fuck everything way and in the specific I’m not ready to fuck you way), a little more thorough discussion of his drug history, and even got confirmation that Eren was totally okay with Levi dating/kissing/fucking other people and it would be kind of hypocritical for him not to. And then it was six in the morning and Eren’s dad came home._ _

__He could not have picked a worse time._ _

__“Dad’s back,” Eren said. “I should probably go to bed soon.”_ _

__“I had one more thing. It can wait until tomorrow, though. Unless -- if you’re going to see Armin, I think I’d like to talk to you before that.”_ _

__Eren blushed. “Yeah, I think we’re going to spend tomorrow -- uh, today, together. Is that okay?”_ _

__“I already told you that’s fine. Just, call me when you wake up, okay?”_ _

__“Sure thing.” Eren smiled bright, despite that he’d been up all night. “Good night, Levi.”_ _

__A strange calm settled over Levi, a calm he hadn’t felt in years and if he allowed himself to be optimistic then maybe he could believe it would last longer than any calm he’d ever gotten from a drug. Levi closed his eyes and allowed himself a small smile. “Good night.”_ _

__Despite that he had not gotten any sleep, Levi went about his day as usual, give or take a few cups of coffee. It wasn’t as if he slept much in the first place._ _

__Run. Shower. Eat. Paint. Chug coffee. Try not to put hands in pockets or hair while still wearing wet painty latex gloves._ _

__Above all, do not confuse coffee with paint water._ _

__Eren called again around eleven; his dad had just left and he was shirtless and frantically cleaning his room before Armin came over. From what Levi could tell through his cracked screen and the grainy Facetime connection, Eren’s hair, which had turned kind of a weird greenish-blue as the dye in it was fading to the bleached straw yellow underneath, was wet and dripping onto his bare shoulders._ _

__“Jesus Christ, Eren.” Levi didn’t even bother hiding how aggravated he was. He definitely wasn’t this good-looking at Eren’s age. He’d been stringy and sort of awkwardly muscular for how skinny he was, and he’d been almost sickly pale. Eren was soft and brown and looked effortlessly comfortable in his own skin._ _

__Eren grinned. “Like what you see?”_ _

__“It’s not the first time I’ve seen it.”_ _

__“And it won’t be the last. Wait -- You’re going to paint me, right?”_ _

__“If you want.” Levi considered his materials; straight acrylic wouldn’t convey Eren’s softness well, but if he switched back to oil it would make Hanji look out-of-place. He’d have to modify the acrylic quite a bit, but it could work out…_ _

__“What else did you want to talk about?”_ _

__“Well.” Levi realised he maybe should have put some thought into how exactly to approach this topic. It might have been a little more sensitive than the rest; certainly it was a situation in which more than just Levi could be affected. “You.” He licked his lips. “You should probably… talk to Armin. About me.”_ _

__Eren paused in making his bed. “Wait -- do you have a thing for Armin?” He looked totally stunned at first, and then Levi noticed a slight darkening in his cheeks._ _

__“I was more saying she might have a thing for me. I think she’s been flirting with me.”_ _

__“Oh!” Eren only flushed more. “Okay. I’ll… I’ll talk to her, yeah. Um, would you be okay with that? You know, if she did.”_ _

__Levi shrugged._ _

__“Levi.”_ _

__“I guess so.” He rubbed a hand down his face. “I’m so fucked up.”_ _

__“Hey.” Eren sat down at the desk upon which his phone was propped up. “You’re not.”_ _

__“Yeah, I am. What would you think if you found out Armin was dating a professor more than ten years older than her?”_ _

__Eren considered that for a moment. “I’d probably hate him on principle and think he’s trying to take advantage of her. Then again, that’s what I’d think of any guy who dates her and isn’t me.” He smirked. “I’m a little protective of her, if you couldn’t tell.”_ _

__“No shit. How about if it was Mikasa?”_ _

__Eren laughed. “Well, putting aside the fact that that would literally never happen, I’d be a little surprised, maybe a little suspicious, but if they’re a good person then I assume she’d know what she’s doing.”_ _

__“You’re far too trusting for your own good.”_ _

__“Heh, I’m really not. Um, could I ask you something? It’s something possibly really awkward.”_ _

__“Go for it.”_ _

__“How many fingers should I use?” Eren, who had already been a little blushy, was now full-on blushing to his ears._ _

__“That’s not that awkward. Not for me, at least.” Levi thought about it. “Well, you’re on the bigger side, so more is probably better. There’s also a lot to be said for doing it slowly, especially the first time. And you also have to consider if she’s okay with it hurting a lot. It’s probably going to hurt at least a little, but you should be able to spare Armin some of that if you’re patient. At least two, though. Any less and you risk tearing her.”_ _

__“T-tearing?” Eren looked terrified._ _

__“Yeah. I can tell you from experience, the asshole is _not_ a place you want to be breaking skin. Go slow, try and get to three fingers. Use more lube than you think you need; there’s no such thing as too much but there _is_ such a thing as too little. You might have to stop after you’ve been fucking her a while to add more. Also, just. Just use a condom. I don’t know if either of you have been tested, but even if you have and you’re clean and whatever, just trust me.” _ _

__“Yeah. Yeah, I have some.” Eren sighed. “You’d think I’d be less awkward about this.”_ _

__“Not at all. I mean, look at me; I’ve fucked more people than I can even remember, and sometimes even I get a little weird about it. Talk to Armin beforehand. She might know a little more than you do and might already know what she wants.”_ _

__“Okay. More things to talk to Armin about. Uh, lemme write this down.” He took paper and a pen from somewhere beyond the reaches of the camera and took notes. “Talk to Armin… Levi with a little heart… butt stuff… more fingers, lube, slow, condom, pain, do not tear. Got it.”_ _

__“How did I fall for such a dork?”_ _

__Eren grinned._ _

__\---_ _

__Levi cleaned his house that evening, as he had scheduled. Eren hadn’t called him back, so he assumed he was still wrapped up in his girlfriend. Which was fine._ _

__He noticed a glass of water sitting on his kitchen counter. At first he wondered why it was there, and then he remembered._ _

__Warm hands, cold water. Nerves. Fiery kisses, pressed up against Eren on the edge of his kitchen counter. Being late to class._ _

__Levi poured the stagnant water down the sink and rinsed out the glass, returning it to its proper place in the cabinet. He was no longer certain why it had seemed so important, or why he’d even left it there in the first place. A simple glass of water had tormented him… but it had also made him _think_ , and maybe he wouldn’t have ever had this chance with Eren if he hadn’t made that silly decision to leave it where it was. _ _

__It had been sitting there for more than a month -- but, God, that meant he’d only kissed Eren for the first time a month ago. He was already falling in love with Eren after a month._ _

__It was so _soon_. But somehow it didn’t feel like too soon. In that month he and Eren had already experienced the ups and downs and almost completely destructive disagreements one might expect out of a couple who’d been together much longer. In that month Levi had learned for the first time what it was like to be careful with someone; and for the first time, someone else had wanted to be careful with him. _ _

__And yet he’d made a fucking fool of himself by showing up to work absolutely covered in bruises that were very clearly love bites. It almost seemed funny in retrospect._ _

__It should have been too soon. But maybe it wasn’t. And maybe thinking himself into circles wasn’t the best thing for Levi at this point, so he stopped doing that and instead concentrated on disinfecting the countertops._ _


	30. Woo-Hoo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now with less pixelation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: if you want to keep pretending that sex, especially anal sex, isn’t awkward then this is not the chapter for you. 
> 
> disclaimer: i have never experienced anal sex, but i’m told it’s more awkward for most people than porn would imply. i tried to do that knowledge justice.

Eren still wasn’t wearing a shirt when he let Armin in.

“Really?” Armin said. Not that it bothered her. She just thought it was funny. 

“What? If I had a shirt on you’d just end up taking it off me anyway.”

She rolled her eyes. Armin kicked the door shut behind her and dragged Eren into a kiss. 

And promptly stepped on his foot. And then he bit his own tongue. 

“Ow! Fuck.” Eren stuck his tongue out, trying to make sure it wasn’t bleeding. 

Armin groaned and leaned her head against Eren’s chest. Her hair and her fluffy sweater tickled his skin. “Well I’m off to a great start.”

Satisfied that his tongue was still whole, Eren kissed Armin again. “Hey, it’s fine. Let’s eat first; I actually did plan to have lunch with you.”

Eren served them both reheated curry -- “It’s sweet, I promise” -- and dug his sheet of notes out of his pocket. “So! I have to talk to you about some stuff.”

“Hm?”

“The first thing is about Levi. He thinks you like him? You know. In the like-liking way.”

Armin laughed. “I know what you mean, Eren.” 

“I was a little surprised he said that, since, well, you said you weren’t interested in him that way, and I never really noticed you acting… I don’t know, differently around him. But, you know, this is your business; he just wants to know if you actually have been flirting with him.”

“Yeah. I have a little bit.” Armin was a little embarrassed; she thought it had been subtle. Maybe Levi was just scarily perceptive. “I’m sorry. I never really intended for this to happen, and I should’ve talked to you about it.”

“Whoa, whoa! You don’t need to apologise.” Eren reached across the table and took Armin’s hand. “It’s totally fine. I just wanted to know. Well, Levi wanted to know, but I do too.”

“Okay. Well, yeah. I guess I’m kind of… interested. Not right _now_ , but maybe eventually I might wanna do… something. If he does. And if it’s okay with you.” She ducked her head down. “Aaah, I don’t even know what I’m saying. This is really awkward. I didn’t think I had it in me to feel something like this for more than one person. And it’s just a weird crush, but, I don’t know.” She picked her head up and tried to look Eren in the eye. “I really like him. I like being around him.”

“Well, he likes you too, so, there.”

Armin blushed all the way to her ears. “And you’re okay with that?”

“Um, yeah. Absolutely.” He cocked his head to the side. “Do you want me to tell you about the dream I had yesterday?”

Armin covered her face. “Oh my _god_ , Eren…”

“It wasn’t that explicit, I woke up before the good part, but I was a dragon and you and Levi were about to --”

“Aaaaah!” Armin shouted and waved a hand in Eren’s face. “I can’t handle this right now!” 

“You are so cute!” Eren got up and skirted around the table. He enveloped Armin in a big rib-squishing hug and pressed his face up against hers. “Are you done eating? Can we do it now? Pleeeeease?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” 

Eren dumped their empty plates in the sink and took Armin by the hand, pulling her laughing up the stairs. She peeled off her jeans, and her underwear with them, in the doorway to his bedroom and then backed him into a wall to drag him down into a searing kiss. She went for the button on his shorts, tugging blindly with one hand while her tongue teased Eren’s lips. 

“Hmm,” Eren hummed when Armin slid her hand into his underwear. She stroked him, very gently, not that he needed much to rouse him. He broke off from her lips and leaned down further to kiss her neck and suck gently at her pulse point. “You’re excited.”

“‘Course I am.” 

He scraped his teeth against her neck. 

“Mm!” She shivered; her cock was a welcome and rigid pressure against Eren’s thigh. 

Eren pushed away from the wall, but Armin seemed to be very invested in keeping him there, because she dug her heels into the carpet and wouldn’t let him move. “Bed,” he murmured against her neck, and only then did she allow him to move. 

The trip was short; Armin’s thighs hit the bed and she dropped gracefully to the side, draping herself across the bed in what she was sure was an extremely alluring manner. (It was, but she really didn’t have to try all that hard to be alluring to Eren. Or anyone, really.)

Eren crawled on top of her, tickled the skin of her belly while he rucked up her sweater and then pulled it off. 

“Ah!” Armin’s shout was muffled by the sweater caught under her chin and around her shoulders. “Eren.”

“Sorry!” He pulled the sweater back down, at least to under her chin. Armin glared up at him; her hair was a mess and sticking up with static. Eren couldn’t help but laugh. 

Armin groaned and pulled the sweater off herself. Right away Eren put his hands on her, stroking her sides, thumbs brushing over her nipples, making her moan. He pressed his palms flat over her chest and squeezed gently; Armin closed her eyes and it almost, _almost_ felt like there was really something there for Eren to grab on to. 

“Hn, Eren.”

“Good?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Eren pinched her nipples, admiring with a bit of surprise how charming the taut nubs looked poking out from between his fingers. He leaned down and licked one, and when Armin gasped at the wet swipe he closed his mouth over the skin and sucked lightly. 

There was no need to hold back the sighs and mewls that escaped Armin’s throat; they were alone, and she wanted Eren to hear her, and it felt so good. It wasn’t so much that Armin was particularly sensitive there, not more so than any other girl. More so it was that Eren’s mouth was on her, and his fingers toying with her other nipple so gently, his entire world narrowing down to those two points, and she could feel the force of his full attention on her. There was no need to overwhelm, only to appreciate, and it felt so damn nice to be so appreciated. 

His hand, suddenly covered in a latex glove and slick with the lube he had conveniently remembered to take out of her bag earlier, crept between her legs, and that _was_ sensitive. It was cold, though, and she made a little noise of displeasure. 

“Hm?” Eren picked his head up and looked into Armin’s eyes, worried he’d done something wrong. 

“Cold,” Armin whispered. 

“Oh. S-sorry. Um…” 

“Spread it around on your fingers a little, first. It’ll warm up.”

Eren did so, clearly a little confused, and the glove made particularly unsexy squeaky noises, but the next time his fingers slid under her balls they were warm. 

“Hn!” Armin pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, not to muffle herself, but just to ground herself as Eren’s mouth and hands worked at her. 

He slipped one slick finger inside her, and god, it was even more uncomfortable than the very first time Armin tried to do this to herself. Her hips jerked, and she wasn’t really sure if it was in response to a good or bad feeling but when she came back down Eren’s finger slid deeper into her, and _that_ felt a lot better. 

Eren’s mouth left her nipple, though his hand still played with the other one, and he left little kisses all down her ribs until he reached that old tickle spot he’d once found by accident and, equally by accident, had used to get Armin surprisingly turned on. He blew a raspberry against the skin there and Armin squealed in delight. 

He wiggled his finger inside her; it was back to feeling really, really weird. She tried to relax but ended up squeezing around his finger instead. Armin was still very unused to how those particular muscles worked. She tried again and that time managed to actually relax though it was tentative and with the way Eren was sliding his finger in and out and nudging at her inner walls she couldn’t hold it for very long. 

“Put another one in already,” Armin demanded. 

“It’s not too soon?”

“No. I usually start with two anyway.” She neglected to mention that starting with two fingers usually was a little bit painful, but Eren certainly wasn’t getting anywhere with just one. 

It didn’t hurt this time though, probably because Eren was going so slowly and watching Armin carefully for even the slightest hint of discomfort. 

“I’m not gonna break,” she said, when he met a little resistance and backed off. 

Eren blushed. “Levi said it could tear…”

Armin groaned in frustration. “It’ll tear if you stuff your whole dick in it without prepping me first. I’m _fine_.”

“Okay.” Eren got a little braver; he pushed two fingers all the way in and though he winced at the resistance, he didn’t stop. “How do you feel?”

Armin shrugged. “It’s fine -- AH!” Her hips jerked up, and Eren grinned. 

“Did I find it?”

Armin burst out laughing. “Yes, you found it.” Her giggles turned to moans as Eren curled his fingers again and stroked that spot. The pressure on her prostate wasn’t the intense screaming pleasure that porn made it out to be; it was maybe equivalent to Eren’s lips tentatively sucking at the head of her cock rather than vastly surpassing. But still good. Very, very good. 

“Mmm,” Eren hummed around Armin’s cock. He pulled off and licked his lips. “You taste good.”

Armin’s brain made a reaction best described as a series of exclamation points. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ve… been eating a lot of fruit.”

Eren laughed and dropped his face down on her thigh. 

“What’s so funny?”

“You.” He turned his head to the side and smiled at her. “You’re cute.” He poked his tongue out and licked the base of her cock.

Seeing this, Armin’s pink-flushed face turned red. “Cute like you want to pinch my cheeks or cute like --” She was cut off by a moan as Eren curled his fingers and pressed hard against her prostate. 

“Cute like you’re beautiful and sexy and I almost can’t wait to fuck you.” He did it again, earning another whine. “But I think you know that.”

“Damn it, Eren, _hnn_! Don’t do that so much!” It felt better and better every time he did it, and if he kept it up she was going to come soon and then he wouldn’t ever get to fuck her.

“Sorry.” He spread his fingers, which she thought felt _much_ nicer when she was already so turned on. “That better?”

“Yeah.” What Armin wanted to say was, _yes, of course, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing_ , but that would have taken a lot more breath than she had to spare at the moment. She stopped watching Eren, because the intensity of his gaze was too strong, too adoring. 

No longer able to keep eye contact, Eren dropped his gaze to his fingers disappearing inside Armin. To think that a couple months ago he’d never even considered anal sex, but now he couldn’t be more excited. And was it weird to think Armin had a really nice asshole? That was probably weird. But still true. She was beautiful everywhere, even down here. 

“Beautiful.” 

The word slipped from his lips unconsciously, barely above a whisper, but Armin heard it and picked her head up, just enough to look at Eren, and she shivered. In the position they were in, Eren could only be looking at… 

Well, she had herself an Ass Man, that was for sure. 

Armin felt a third finger enter her and she laid back again. It wasn’t even uncomfortable, which was probably because Eren had gone at a freaking snail’s pace up to this point. “Thats enough,” she said, when he spread his fingers to little resistance. “Your cock isn’t that much bigger than that.” 

“You sure you’re ready?”

“ _Yes_ , Eren. I’m ready.”

Eren directed her to turn over. He smoothed his hands down her back; Armin was shaking with excitement. “Come on, come _on_ ,” she said, wiggling her hips. 

Eren lined himself up and started to push in slowly, sooooo slowly. Armin gasped; Eren stopped breathing. All the awkwardness of the last hour was worth it, so worth it, because this felt so amazing. It was as if a great beast had awoken within them, rumbling up from within the earth --

“Oh my god,” Armin said, and she did not sound happy. 

“Huh?” 

“The _garage_!” she shouted, and sure enough when Eren paid attention to that great beast it turned out that it was the rumbling of the garage a floor below him. 

“Shit.” Eren pulled out. 

“You have got to be kidding me!” Armin grabbed for her clothes. “You said he was at work!”

“He should be!” Eren shouted, frantically hopping around and trying to get his shorts on over his achingly hard cock. “He’s not supposed to be back for hours!”

Armin tossed a shirt at Eren, which she’d picked up from the floor. It hit him square in the face. “I’m gonna kill him. I’ll do it with my own bare hands. Oh god, my ass feels so weird right now…” She put on her underwear, grimacing at the thought of the lube dripping out and ruining it. Good thing she’d brought a change of clothes. 

Eren was dressed much faster than Armin, and he bolted out the bedroom door after checking to make sure his erection had gone down sufficiently for him to be presentable. 

Grisha came in as Eren got to the bottom of the steps; he had a white box in his arms. “Hi, son.”

“What are you doing back so soon?”

Grisha looked taken aback. “I got the afternoon off. I thought, since you’re going home before your birthday, we could have a little party for you today.”

Eren’s jaw dropped open. “W-what?”

“Surprise…” Grisha said, starting to realise his interruption was not as welcome as he’d hoped. 

“Listen, Dad, not that I don’t… appreciate the thought…” Eren scratched the back of his head. “It’s just, well, this isn’t really the best time, and I’m not sure I --”

“I understand. I know I haven’t been there for you much before, but I’d like to try to make amends. I had hoped Mikasa would be here too, to be honest. But, if you want to pick a different time, maybe invite Armin over…” 

“Hi, Mr. Jager.” 

Eren whipped his head around to see Armin, fully dressed and not a hair out of place but with the same light sheen of sweat on her face as was on Eren’s. She was smiling placidly while coming down the steps behind him. 

“Wasn’t expecting to see you for a few hours.”

Grisha’s eyes widened somewhat comically as he took in what he’d just walked into. “Um. I’ll just leave the cake in the fridge.” He did so, shoving a few things aside to make room for the little white box that was, apparently, full of pre-birthday cake. Then he made his way back to the door. “Call me if you need anything,” he mumbled, and then he was gone. 

Eren, who had experienced the last thirty seconds or so on autopilot, just watching the scene unfold, dropped like a rock as soon as the door shut behind Grisha. Still holding on to the stair railing, he fell to his knees. “He totally knows.”

“Yeah.” 

“That was the single most awkward experience of my entire life.”

“Happy almost-birthday, Eren.”

Eren groaned. This was not a fun, sexy groan; this one was a groan that expressed a desire to crawl under a rock and not emerge for several years. The garage opened once more; Grisha’s tires squealed as he backed out of the driveway as quickly as possible. 

“Are you just gonna sit there or are we going back upstairs?”

“Give me a minute.”

Armin kneeled down next to Eren. She grimaced a little at the uncomfortable feeling of lube slowly dripping out of her ass and onto her underwear, but Eren, who had hidden his face in his hands, didn’t notice. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just really embarrassed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. I’m sure he would’ve figured it out eventually. Your bag is still on the couch.”

Armin looked over, and sure enough, there it was. 

“If you want to go back up and wait for me, that’s fine. I might be a few minutes.”

“I can stay with you.” It sounded a lot like Eren was freaking out, from his unsteady voice and sudden drop in self-confidence that Armin gathered from his words. She knew not to leave him alone if that happened. 

Eren looked up and smiled at her. “I’m okay. Just not sure if Little Eren is ready to wake up yet.”

“Do you want me to check?” She was mostly just joking around, though she was down for pretty much anything Eren wanted her to do at this point. 

Eren’s lips twitched a little. “Sure.”

She scooted around in front of him and pushed his knees apart. 

“Oh my god. Here?”

“Here or upstairs.” She slipped the tips of her fingers into the bottom hems of his shorts and rubbed her thumbs over the little bits of squish underneath his thighs, just above the backs of his knees. “Decide quick,” she teased, inching her fingers higher. 

“Upstairs,” Eren decided, and they raced each other up the steps. 

Eren fell onto the bed and spread his legs, watching between them as Armin took off her pants and underwear. She took her sweet time, as if she hadn’t been naked but for her socks only minutes earlier. She left the sweater, because it was warm and fluffy and long enough that it just barely covered her still-hard cock. 

No interruptions would deter Armin Arlert. 

Within moments (because the author is too lazy to write them taking off each other’s clothes more than once, come on, seriously) she had his dick in her mouth, and sucked happily at the tip while staring up at Eren with impossibly large blue eyes. Little Eren was definitely awake. 

Despite looking right at Eren, taking in every one of his myriad of responses to her touch, Armin didn’t just go for all the things Eren liked best. She knew them, of course; Eren did _not_ hold back letting Armin know when he liked something she did. But she didn’t really care. She licked where she wanted to lick, sucked where she wanted to suck, kissed where she wanted to kiss, and rather than make up with her hands for what she couldn’t shove down her throat she only touched his cock to tilt it this way and that and get at where she wanted to be. 

Maybe it wasn’t constant absolute bliss of sensation for Eren, but it _looked_ pretty fucking great and as a person with a very high amount of concern for aesthetics that really did make a big impact on him. 

So his girlfriend couldn’t make his entire cock disappear into her mouth in one swallow. Who cared? Deep-throating was definitely overrated; he was totally here for Armin’s little kitten licks and lollipop sucks. 

Armin kissed the tip with just a bit of suction, then peppered little kisses in a line down the side. She licked up the underside and wrapped her lips around the head again, drawing little circles with her tongue, and when Eren started to tense his thighs, shaking with the effort it took to hold himself back, she dug the fingers of her right hand into the crease of his upper thigh and firmly held him down. 

“I’m gonna--”

“Shh,” Armin hissed. Her left hand tightened around the base of his cock, and she gently pulled at his foreskin with her teeth. 

“Ow!”

She pressed her tongue flat against the bitten spot to soothe it, and then blew cool air over it. “Sorry. I was curious.”

“It’s fine.” Truth be told it really didn’t hurt _that_ much. 

“Just _fine_?” She curled the fingers on his thigh so the nails dug in; not enough to hurt, but enough to show she wasn’t pleased. And then Armin put her mouth on him again, taking his cock in as far she she could, and she hummed as she bobbed up and down, adding pressure with her tongue. Some saw sucking dick as indecent, even degrading, but Armin found she loved it. Saliva dripped from her lips, and she closed her eyes, completely shameless in this state as she so rarely ever was. 

“Oh, fuck!” Eren’s hips jerked entirely without his permission, but Armin held him down and tried to take his cock in deeper, knowing she risked gagging on it but she really, really wanted to try. 

She curled her right hand into a tight fist -- someone somewhere had suggested that -- and breathed out through her nose, relaxed her throat as much as she could… 

Eren let out a strangled cry as he felt his cock slide into her throat, her lips inching towards the base. Okay, maybe it wasn't _totally_ overrated. He threw his head back, and in his bliss almost forgot what the _actual_ goal of this day was supposed to be. “Stop!”

Armin squeezed her eyes shut tighter and slowly came up, letting him slide out only as fast as she could handle without choking. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice raspy. 

Eren breathed hard, seeing stars on the back of his eyelids. “I’m gonna come if you keep doing that. I wanted to fuck you.”

“Oh.” Armin had, in fact, completely forgotten. “Well, get to it then.”

With a clean latex glove on Eren checked to make sure Armin was still loose enough to accept him; he added a little more lube to replace what had leaked out of her during their interruption. He rolled a fresh condom on, and tried to figure out where to kneel behind Armin -- “Can you spread your legs a little more? That’s good.” He pushed into her even slower than before, and slightly distracted, praying that there would be no more interruptions. 

Armin whined, long and high-pitched, when he bottomed out. “Move, _move_!”

And Eren did. He wanted to start slow, let Armin get used to it, but quickly found that he was not able to control the speed or force of his thrusts; his hips did what they wanted, which resulted in a rapid but uneven and entirely hedonistic pace and Armin letting out confused little mewls as she tried and failed to react to him, to push back against him. She twisted her upper body and reached out a hand toward his face, and he leaned down to kiss her, despite the awkward angle and her shoulder pressing into his neck. 

“Mm, ah, mm!” Armin moaned against his lips and the kiss did nothing to muffle her; she wasn’t egregiously loud or anything and Eren certainly appreciated hearing her. “Eren!” Her hand went into his hair, grasping tightly, and he was pretty sure she was using him at least a little bit for support which was probably not a great idea as he wasn’t feeling super well-balanced either. 

In fact he wasn’t feeling a lot of bodily self-control in general; he came within about a minute, and it took him completely by surprise. It took Armin by surprise too; despite the condom she could still sort of feel him ejaculate inside her and _wow_ that was a hella weird feeling, and his hips jerked to a halt and his breath caught on a groan and amidst Armin’s vague annoyance that he’d come so soon she just _loved_ seeing, hearing, feeling him completely overwhelmed. 

“ _Armin_ , he whispered as soon as he had even the first of his wits back. He tried to move his hips again, but it was too much, too soon. “I can’t…” He pulled out, still staying pressed up against her while he kissed the back of her neck and jacked her off as best as he could. 

She came in his hand and on his sheets, silently, at odds with the constant song of sex sounds she’d provided until that point. 

They collapsed on top of each other, which was uncomfortable, and Eren let the condom join its friend in the trash can before he rolled to the side and scooped up Armin in his arms for a post-coital cuddle which, he guessed, would soon turn into a lovely afternoon nap. 

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to come so soon.”

“‘S fine. Still felt good. You?”

“Mm. Much better than with Annie.”

“ _Annie_? Seriously?”

Eren, slightly hazy, remembered he wasn’t supposed to talk about who he’d slept with over the summer. “Shit.” 

“Wow. I knew you knew her already, but, wow.” Armin laughed. “Isn’t she like, super gay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Eren mumbled, cursing himself. He’d _promised_ he wouldn’t tell anyone. “Don’t tell anyone we fucked, I was supposed to keep it a secret.”

“I won’t. Just suprised. _Annie?_ ”

“Shut uuuuuup!” he whined. 

Sure enough, after a little more teasing, they were both asleep within minutes.


	31. New Perspective

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Convergence of three very serious situations. It’s a party! A big, stressful party!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some more side stories from the interim:  
> [Plum](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4146984). this one is about mikasa and sasha and what they’ve been doing while these shitheads are dealing with all their allosexual bullshit. (well not quite. levi’s not precisely allo. aNYWAY).  
> [Apple](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4158156), which is a little thing about mikasa and eren after carla died. originally posted on tumblr in response to a writing prompt. 
> 
> also i made an [ask blog](http://askorangefic.tumblr.com/) for this fic. 
> 
> warnings for the chapter: neglectful parenting, traumatic injury, sex, outing.

“ _Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you_...”

In the dark kitchen, lit only by twenty tiny candles, Eren managed to hide the full extent of how fucking awkward he found this whole situation with merely a hand over his mouth. Armin sang with a wavering voice as she tried very, very hard not to dissolve into laughter. Grisha appeared calm; it must have been all those years of practice as a surgeon, trying not to freak out while he cut people open. Even so, from the light of the candles that flickered just below Grisha’s face, Eren could see he was uncomfortable. 

“ _Happy birthday, dear Eren, happy birthday to you_.”

Eren blew out the candles. He didn’t make wishes so much as plans for himself; Armin’s hand clasped his under the table as if she knew exactly what was in his head. Which she probably did. 

Armin’s skin was still sweaty, and so was Eren’s. They’d showered to get rid of the sex smell, but they’d showered _together_ so of course they left the shower very, very warm. 

With the lights on, Eren cut up the tiny cake (which honestly was far too small for the number of candles jammed into its icing) into thirds, and they all ate in complete silence. 

Grisha cleared his throat. Eren felt his stomach drop like a stone. 

“So, you two --”

“NOPE,” Eren interrupted. He knew where that was going and he did not want to go there. “We are not talking about it.”

“Very well.” That was Grisha’s way of saying _fine, but I’m not happy about it_. Though he looked relieved. “How have you been?”

“Fine.” Safe topics. Stick to safe topics. Or, well, as safe as topics could be in such a volatile family. “My classes are going well. Portfolio review for the major is after break and Professor Hannes says I’m basically already accepted.”

“That’s… good.” He smiled weakly. “You thinking about a minor?”

“Not really,” Eren said, irritated. “No more than the last six times you asked.”

“Right. How’s your memory? Getting any better?”

Eren dropped his fork on his empty plate and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms and stared across the table at his father. Armin, who went unseen by both of them, glared daggers at Grisha. “It’s been, what, eight years? It’s never gonna get any better than this,” Eren said, as if it should be obvious. Which, really, it should. 

“We have a program at the hospital for --”

Eren stood up. Without a word, he cleared his and Armin’s empty plates from the table and dumped them in the sink. He gripped the edge of the counter and leaned over it, squeezing his eyes shut. “Armin, if you want to leave, you can leave.”

“Eren --”

“Please.” He didn’t want Armin around for a fight. He’d never liked that Mikasa would be around when he would yell at his father, but she always refused to leave because she had every right to be pissed too. Armin, though, he could protect. He could protect her from himself. 

She didn’t want to leave, but if she stayed, Eren would never say all that he needed to say. That was the way it always was. “Okay. I’ll see you later.”

“I’m sorry. See you.”

Armin took her bag and left through the front door. As she circled around the house she heard Eren shouting, though she couldn’t make out the words. 

\---

“My shit memory is your fault.” It wasn’t the first time Eren had said it. Far from. And he was certain it wouldn’t be the last. 

“I know,” Grisha said. And for him, it was the first time he’d ever admitted it. “I’m sorry.”

“Holy shit.” Eren looked up from the sink, with fire in his eyes. “You’re _sorry_?” He didn’t notice he was shouting. He didn’t really care. “Were you _sorry_ those first three years, when I had to go back to therapy after what _should_ have been my last day? Were you sorry when I was in the hospital and you didn’t visit me even though you worked a floor below? When I missed Mom’s funeral because I was in a coma? When I had so many seizures my nurses stopped calling you after each one? Were you sorry when I missed so much school because of my compound fractured legs, broken ribs, and cracked skull, I had to stay back a year? Were you sorry when I failed every single math and history class after that no matter how hard I tried, and all you could say was that you were disappointed? Were you sorry when you spent every waking moment at the hospital, working double-time, treating other patients while your own kids were fucked up, alone at home, and hating you more every day? Were you sorry when Mikasa and I made it to college, I almost didn’t, you could have been proud of us but the first words out of your mouth were ‘I hope you don’t waste this on art’? When I needed to get my hospital documents to Disability Services in order to get a note-taker and you didn’t fax them until after classes started? Oh, but you’re sorry _now_. So that fixes it all, right?” 

“Eren, I know I haven’t done much right these past few years --”

“ _Few_ years?”

“...These past many years. But I want to try and fix it.”

“There’s nothing to fix!” Eren reflexively slammed his hand down on the counter. “Our family isn’t _broken_. We don’t _have_ one.” He took a few steps closer to the table where Grisha still sat. “Mikasa and I are family. You’re just the guy who pays our tuition. And trust me, that’s the best you’re gonna get. You did a fucking great job throwing out whatever family ties you had to us, and apologising to me won’t bring them back.”

“Eren --”

“And you can ask Mikasa, too, if you want. I’m sure she’s got another list of reasons why she hates you. Like when she came out to you, and you told her she’d ‘get better’ once she found the right man. Don’t think I didn’t hear that. You’re an asshole. And don’t even get me started on the shit you said about her parents.”

Grisha looked down at his hands clasped on the table. He had hoped that Eren’s good mood the other day had meant he’d be receptive to apologies. Apparently not. “Listen. The car accident --”

“It’s wasn’t an _accident_. It was neglect, reckless driving, manslaughter; the only reasons your record is clean is because you’re the town saviour, you fucked up _perfectly_ , and no-one wants to listen to a little slurring brown boy with a traumatic brain injury.”

Grisha had nothing to say to that. He couldn’t dispute it, not anymore. It had taken him this long to look into the face of his grief and realise that it was his own damn fault; he’d killed his wife, he’d broken his son, he’d torn their family to shreds. Or so he thought. It turned out he’d really just burned their family to the ground, and not even ash remained. “Do you want me to keep paying your tuition?”

“What?” 

“I’m not holding it over your head. I plan to keep paying it, if you want me to.” He took a deep breath. It was far too late to try to mend anything. He’d been prepared for it; his private and secret (and honestly far too late) grief counselling had helped him be ready for whatever outcome. It hurt no less, but he knew it was a possibility, at least. “You don’t want me to be your father. I can accept that. I don’t want to accept it, but I can. I’ll take whatever I can get, at this point, and if all I am to you is financial support then I can still live with that. At least it’s not nothing.” 

Eren glared at him, trying to find some sort of loophole, some expectation, but Grisha gave none. “Yeah, I want you to keep paying it.” Sure, he could declare financial independence from him and probably get more out of the FAFSA, but that wasn’t exactly the ideal option. And it was too risky. What if he didn’t get enough financial aid? He’d have to drop out. And he’d be out on the street. He also had to consider what Mikasa would want, because of course she’d be affected by his decisions too. 

“Okay. Then I will.” 

“You’re not going to fight me?” 

“No, Eren.”

Eren was confused to start with, but also frustrated, because shouting matches with his father were the only time he could get out what he needed to say. He had no prompt, now, for the thousands of complaints he’d accumulated over the years, the ones he needed to shout in his father’s face every once in a while just to make sure it was real, he wasn’t making shit up, Grisha was actually as irresponsible and selfish as Eren thought. 

“I’m done fighting you.” 

Eren blinked once, then pursed his lips. He turned and walked out, headed up the stairs, came back down moments later with his wallet and phone and keys and went out the garage door. “I’m going out,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. Don’t go in my room.”

“Bye, son.”

“Bye.”

Eren took his bike out; it was a little out of tune, the tires not as full as they should be, but it would do for the ride. Still, Eren put on the dusty helmet a little more carefully than usual. 

At the end of the driveway, he texted Armin. _sorry about all that. im going for a ride, ill see you soon._ Then he jammed his phone deep in his pocket, and he took off. 

Wind whipped past Eren’s face as he sped down the slight hill a little ways down the street, out towards the place where the suburb melted into a quilt of rural farmland and, beyond, hills, with pale mountains in the distance partially hidden by fog. The last house before the grass turned wild belonged to an elderly couple who spent most of the year at their beach house in Florida; all the lights were off. Eren sped past, not sparing it even a glance; he was absorbed in the feeling of wind on his face, in his hair, pulling at his clothes, cooling the sweat on his neck. He felt like he was flying. 

He let the whistling in his ears and the smell of the flower buds opening on the trees clear his head. When the strain of his leg muscles proving his life turned to a burn that slowed him down, Eren slowed and made a wide turn on the empty road. He headed mostly back towards the town, but a mile away from the limits he turned off onto a beaten-down dirt road, just wide enough for two people to walk very close side-by-side between the high grass on either side. Or just wide enough for one bike. 

There was already a bike chained up to his favourite tree, so Eren propped his own up against the far side. He grinned at the sunny yellow paint on the hand-me-down bike, chipping a little but still vibrant. He tried the lock; it was the same combination it had always been, and he hooked his own bike in and climbed the next tree over to the third level of branches, then carefully stepped across to the next tree. The thick, sturdy branches almost made a bridge over the stream below, which was just barely too wide to jump across. 

Eren climbed down to ground level, and beyond the trees, the little clearing at the edge of the cliff awaited him. 

The shitty little bench Mikasa had built, really just a couple planks of wood nailed together and staked into the ground, was still there, and Armin sat atop it. “Hi, Eren.”

“Been here long?”

“A while. I was just thinking about some stuff. Had a feeling you’d come here.”

“A feeling. Heh, I always come here.” He went around the seat and sat down on the far side, and he pulled Armin in to his side. “I’m sorry, I pretty much just kicked you out.”

“And right after you made beautiful love to me.” Armin snuggled in close and wrapped her arms around Eren’s waist. 

“Yeah. That was…” Eren trailed off, not finding the words to finish his sentence. 

“I forgive you. But don’t do it again.”

“I won’t. I don’t think I’ll have to yell at him again.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” Eren looked down at Armin; he could only see the top of her head. “Kind of could use a distraction, really.”

“Like a sex distraction?”

Eren snorted, which ruffled her hair a little. “Here?”

“Sure. No-one ever comes by.” Armin turned her head up to kiss him. 

“Mm. I mean, I’d be happy to, but I didn’t bring any stuff with me.”

“Oh, God, no; I biked here, and my ass was already hurting. You’re not fucking me again. Not today. There’s plenty more we can do though, or did you forget all that?” She kissed him again, a little longer this time. 

“Course not.” Eren extracted himself from Armin and stood up. “Lay down.”

Armin’s lips twitched. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said, and she laid back on the weird tiny bench. 

Eren went for her pants zipper. 

“Hey, I don’t want butt splinters.”

Eren took off his jacket. “Hips up.” He laid out the jacket on the bench under her and tugged her pants off. She shivered in the chilly early spring air. “Where’d your underwear go?” 

She shrugged, smiling like she knew exactly where it went, and it was in fact a very interesting location, and she wasn’t going to tell him no matter how much he prodded. “Your jacket is gonna get gross.”

“I’ll deal with it.” He lifted her sweater and stuck his head under, pressed his lips to the tickle spot he was rapidly getting obsessed with, and blew a raspberry into it. She laughed and tangled her fingers in his hair. Eren’s tongue dipped into her belly button, and she squirmed, so he gripped her hips to hold her in place. 

“How are you so sensitive here, of all places?” Eren asked. He pressed fluttering kisses all over her belly. 

“St--” Armin began, but she bit her lip hard to shut herself up. 

“Huh?”

She shook her head. “Keep going.”

“You sure? That sounded like ‘stop’.”

“I said keep going, Eren.” She tightened her grip on his hair and squished his face against her skin. 

He couldn’t move his face much, so he tickled her sides; Armin just ended up holding him tighter while she squirmed and laughed. “Let me up,” Eren mumbled as best he could. 

“Sorry.”

“You’re stronger than you think.” Free once more, Eren started kissing a little lower, and he scraped his teeth over her hipbones, which she seemed to like judging by the catch in her breath. 

“Are you gonna…?”

“Hmm?” he hummed into Armin’s skin. 

“Mm, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” Eren rested his cheek on her abdomen and smiled at her, half-hidden by her bunched-up fluffy sweater. “But I’d really like to suck you off. Can I?”

“Yeah. Do it.” 

He didn’t right away, but he did spit into his palm and start to stroke her half-hard cock slowly. Eren continued kissing her stomach, and his knuckles and the head of her cock bumped against his neck. 

“Nnh, cold…”

“Want me to warm you up?”

Armin laughed at his attempt at sexy talk. “Oh my god, Eren. That was awful.” But she moaned when he pressed his nose against her trimmed pubic hair and gave a little kitten-lick to her balls. 

Eren’s phone vibrated; he yanked it out and hit ignore before dropping it to the grass below them.

“Who?” Armin asked. 

“Levi. I’ll call him back later.” He closed his mouth over her cock. 

“Ohmygod.” Armin’s fingers clenched tighter in Eren’s hair. “Ohhh,” she moaned, and Eren slowly lowered his mouth to take her in as far as he could. He could feel her getting close to the back of his throat, but to his surprise (and hers) he didn’t choke at all, and Armin trembled and bit her lips together until Eren’s bottom lip brushed against her balls. “Fuck!” she shouted, scaring several nearby birds from their newly-built nests. 

Eren started to pull back, and Armin immediately (and completely by accident) lifted her hips and shoved her cock back down Eren’s throat. Eren’s eyes watered, but she held him in place and screamed out “I’m coming!” and fucked into his mouth again, and then his throat filled with warmth and he swallowed it down; he’d planned to already, but this was sooner than he’d expected and as soon as Armin’s hands released their death grip on his hair he backed off and coughed heavily. 

“Sorry.” Armin breathed hard post-orgasm, and felt a little too boneless to move quite yet. 

Eren coughed again. “It’s fine,” he said. “Remember how fast I came the first time you did that to me?”

“Heh. Yeah.”

He leaned down on top of her, keeping her warm until her cock softened enough to fit back in her pants, and nuzzled his face against her neck.

“Should I do you now?”

Eren shook his head, and his eyelashes tickled her jaw. “No, thanks. I’m fine, it’ll go down eventually.” 

“Hmm.” She stroked his hair gently, flattening the greenish strands she’d crumpled in her mindless bliss. “I love you.”

Eren chuckled. “I love you too.”

They stayed there in the clearing until the sun started to go down, and then they biked back to town with the sky going dark and the temperature dropping rapidly. Clouds were rolling in, backlit by the rising moon; it would probably rain overnight. 

Eren turned onto the street to his house, and Armin stopped and called out to him. 

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Eren stopped and looked back at her. “To my house…” He didn’t really want to go back. 

“Stay at mine.” The moon caught in Armin’s hair, lighting it up like a halo, but he couldn’t see her face. “I’m coming out to Grandpa tomorrow. I’d like it if you were there.”

Eren’s eyes widened, glittering. “Yeah. Absolutely.” 

Armin’s house was silent when they let themselves in, and she led Eren by the hand up the steps to her room. Eren stripped down to his underwear and took the side of the bed by the wall; Armin stole his shirt off the ground and wore that to bed, snuggling up close to him. 

“I missed you, you know,” she whispered. 

“So did I.”

In the morning, Armin flatly refused to give Eren’s shirt back. So he picked her fluffy oversized sweater from the top of her laundry basket and pulled that over his head; on him it was just about the right size. “Wow. This is really comfortable.” He pulled at the neckline, which was a normal round neck but definitely smaller than he was used to. “Except this.”

Eren’s shirt, though not that much larger than Armin’s size, hung off one shoulder because of its wide neckline. She shook her head at him. “Come on. Breakfast.”

Armin’s grandfather was already downstairs, and as soon as he saw Armin come yawning into the kitchen he reached for the toaster; then he saw Eren, greeted him, and added another slice of bread before starting the heat. 

It wasn’t until after the toast popped out and Eren served their perfectly browned omelettes that he noticed they’d switched shirts. 

“Oh,” he said, eyes darting between the two of them. “I see.”

Eren remembered the shirt he was wearing and tried to crush the little voice in his head telling him “ _You fucked his granddaughter and he knows and now he’s going to kill you with the shark jaws mounted on the wall_.” He looked to Armin, who had apparently just shoved about a quarter of her omelette in her mouth all at once. 

“Don’t look so terrified!” Grandpa laughed. “It was a matter of time, right?”

Eren thought it was a perfect opportunity. But Armin just covered her mouth and mumbled “Yeah,” around her mouthful of food. So he stayed quiet too. 

Armin missed at least three more opportunities, when her grandpa tried to start conversations about what they’d been doing at college, if there was anything new aside from their relationship, and what they planned to do when they got back. All were questions he had already asked Armin, so it just served to make her more nervous because she couldn’t tell if he actually knew what she wanted to say to him or was just expressing the Arlert Way of being really bad at small talk. 

After the meal she nearly bolted from the table, dragging Eren up the stairs behind her by the sleeve of his borrowed sweater. 

Eren questioned her as soon as they were back in her room. “I thought you wanted to --”

“I know!” Armin sat down on her bed and put her face in her hands. “It’s really hard, okay? It took me this many years just to tell you, and you know everything about me. I never doubted you would accept me, but I was still scared. With him… I have no idea.”

“Well, he thinks you’re gay right now, and he’s fine with that.”

“They’re completely different things. That doesn’t mean anything.” Armin took down a book from her bookshelf and just about threw it at Eren. “There are books, like that one, written about how the gay community has thrown us under the bus to get their acceptance, and how that has not only allowed for but in many cases increased the violence done against us. Because they’re _good_ queers, and we’re _weirdos_ who go against the most basic division society has.” She handed him another book, more gently this time. “Our contributions to queer rights have largely been glossed over or appropriated as part of efforts for gay integration. You’ve heard of the Stonewall Riots. That started because drag queens, who later called themselves trans women when the term existed, were frequently beaten by cops and arrested for ‘cross-dressing’. And it turned into an annual Gay Pride March, where cops carry rainbow flags and trans girls are looked at with revulsion when we reveal we’re not just guys in dresses putting on a show.” She reached under her bed for a third book, and kept it clutched tight in her hands. “Just because someone’s fine with the idea of me being gay doesn’t mean they’ll be fine with me being a girl. I know that damn well.”

Eren sat down next to her. “I’m sorry. I should have known that. I like to think I understand… but I really don’t.”

There was a knock on her bedroom door. Armin froze.

“Armin?” her grandfather called through the door. 

“How long has he been there?” she whispered. Eren touched her shoulder, but she didn’t relax at all. 

“Ar-- I… Moblit called me yesterday…”

She gasped and leaned against Eren. “No,” she whispered. “No, not this again.”

“Please let me talk to you.”

She shoved Eren off her and dashed toward the window; he dropped the books and caught her around the waist as she fumbled with the screen locks. “Let me go!” she shouted. “I can climb down, I’ve done it before.”

“Armin! Armin, calm down, he _knows_ \--”

“That’s the point!” She struggled against his arms. “Do you think I like people finding out things like that about me without telling them?” 

Eren felt like he’d been punched in the gut, because he’d found out by accident too, but he still didn’t let her go.

The knocking on the door increased in volume. “Armin? Are you okay?”

“ _No I’m not okay!_ ” she shouted toward the door. “This isn’t fair!”

“Armin, please…” Eren’s arms strained to keep her in place. His heart beat quick and hard, and he started to sweat under her sweater, which suddenly felt much too tight around his neck. “Please calm down. I’ll let you go if you calm down. Please.”

“I can’t be calm about this!” She went slack in his arms and they sank to the floor together, but she didn’t stop struggling. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…”

“You can.”

“No!” She finally managed to shove him off, and crawled halfway to the door before standing up and stomping the rest of the way. She threw it open to face her grandfather. “What did he tell you? To kick out your fucked-up grandkid?”

“No. He told me my granddaughter visited him, and wanted to ask how you were doing.” 

“So he told you. I can’t fucking believe this.” Armin usually tried to keep her less-than-savoury language to a minimum around her grandpa but she was livid and so her language filter was not the most immediately present thing in her mind. 

“I think he thought I already knew.” He flexed his hands at his sides, brought them up slightly, and then after a pause wrung them together. He looked utterly lost. “I asked him who we was talking about and he said your name and swore and hung up. I. I thought I should talk to you about it. Can we talk?”

“Are you going to kick me out?” All the emotion left Armin’s voice as she fought to hold it together. “Because if so I’d rather just leave now.” 

“Of course not.” Grandpa reached out finally and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t really know what’s happening, but I’d never do that to you.”

Armin took a deep breath. She was still shaking, still wanted to march down the road and give Moblit a piece of her mind, still wanted to slam the door in her grandfather’s face and make a run for it. But she didn’t do any of those things. “I. Okay. We can talk. Just give me some time to calm down.”

“That’s fine.”

“I was going to tell you,” she said in a rush. “I was gonna tell you today.”

“We’ll talk about it later, all right?”

Armin nodded, and when he let her shoulder go she closed the door and leaned back against it, and slid down to the floor. She curled up into a ball and Eren came over to her. He sat down next to her and held her silently. 

“You should call Levi,” Armin said, many minutes later when she’d stopped shaking. “While I’m talking to him. He called you yesterday.”

“Yeah. I will. Thanks for reminding me.” 

“Can I keep your shirt for now?” she asked, in a small voice. 

“Sure. Whatever you want.”

“Can we go back to the cliff later?” she asked, finally picking her head up. “I’ll bring blankets this time so we’re more comfortable.”

“Yeah.” Eren decided he would bring lunch as well. They might be out all day. 

“I should go talk to him.”

“Sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

“I’m sure. You need to call Levi anyway.” She kissed him, then stood up. “I’m going down. You can stay up here if you want.”

“I should go home and change. If you need anything --”

“I know where to find you.” 

They went down the stairs together, and Eren left through the back door after trying to communicate to Armin’s grandfather with only his eyes that if he hurt Armin there would be hell to pay and Eren was collecting. Armin sat down at the kitchen table across from her grandfather; a box of tissues had taken up residence in the middle of the table, but neither of them mentioned it. 

“So,” grandpa started. “I don’t want to assume. Tell me what’s happening.”

“I’m a girl,” Armin said simply. 

“Woman,” he corrected. “Surely, at this age. But… I guess what I don’t understand is how you can know that.” 

“It’s called being transgender, Grandpa.”

“I know what it is. I’m a lonely old man who does nothing but garden and watch TV all day; even if I didn’t want to see these sorts of things I wouldn’t be able to get away.” He sighed. “I know it’s not about… sex, or… gender roles. I don’t know what it _is_. I’m willing to accept you as a woman; I don’t know much about it but if that’s what you say you are, then you are that. I just want to understand.”

Armin looked down at the table, traced the greywashed grain with her eyes. It was easier than speaking to her grandfather’s face. “When I was a kid… it doesn’t always start when we’re kids, but it did for me. I knew I was a girl as soon as I understood what a girl was, that it was something other from what people thought I was. I can’t tell you why I thought that at the time. It just seemed so clear to me. It wasn’t that I did ‘girl things’ or whatever. I read a lot, you know that. That was about all I ever did. I didn’t care what the other girls wore or that my hair looked like theirs. And I didn’t _want_ to be one of them so much as I knew that I _was_. It doesn’t always have to make sense, I guess. Maybe someone who didn’t figure out they’re trans until they’re older can explain it better. For me it just was what it was.” 

Armin felt a pressure behind her eyes and she fought not to blink because she knew that would break any tension holding her tears back. “I think I got so close to Mom, more than I did with Dad, because she was a woman and I wanted to know why I was. I wanted to know why people called us something different, and expected such different things of us.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Even if she worried so much that I wasn’t growing up to be as… macho, or whatever, as ‘other boys’ did. I wanted to show I was a girl, and part of that meant being like her. It’s like… I learned what gender roles were after I already knew which ones were supposed to apply to me, and I also knew that no-one wanted me to act like that, but I wanted to anyway. Now I know better than to think I should run my life by gender roles and expectations, but it’s what I thought then.”

“...I’m still not sure I understand,” Grandpa said. 

“I’m not sure I do either.” She blinked; a hot tear dribbled over her cheek. “I don’t feel like I need to. I sometimes think it’s like the way people see God; they know a god exists, though they don’t have proof. But they don’t need proof. They feel in their hearts that God is real, and that’s enough. For me, my womanhood is my God.” Armin wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry, I can’t do better than that. I’ve never needed to prove it to myself.”

Her grandfather nodded slowly. “I can work with that.” He pushed the box of tissues toward Armin, who was now crying outright. “Same name?”

She nodded. “For now, at least. I know it’s a masculine name but I like it and I’ve never found anything I like better.” 

“Okay. Is this something you want other people to know? I know it’s… not always safe to tell people.”

She bit her lip. “I guess I’d rather you didn’t. Moblit and Ilse know -- well, Ilse always did, she’s weird like that. Eren, Mikasa, our other friends all know; my professors do too. No-one else around here, though, so I’d rather you not say anything.”

“Not to the house, either?”

Armin thought about their renters. They were nice people. She liked them. She cared about them, and they cared about her. But she wasn’t ready to tell them yet. “No. I’ll tell them when I’m ready.”

“That’s fair. Are you going to stick around today?”

“No. I’m going out with Eren.”

Grandpa smiled, almost embarrassed. “I was prepared for you to be gay.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh, I know. I was just prepared for it. This was a surprise.”

“Shocking, huh?”

He shook his head. “It takes a lot more than finding out my grandson is actually my granddaughter to shock me.”

\---

“ _Hi, Eren._ ”

Eren smiled and squeezed the phone between his shoulder and face while he made sandwiches. “Hi, Levi.”

“ _Is Armin there?_ ” Levi asked. 

“No, she’s coming out to her grandpa right now. I talked to her though.”

“ _Oh._ ”

“She liiiiiikes you.”

“ _...Yeah. Good._ ” Levi was silent for a few moments. “ _Listen, I need to tell you this. You didn’t ignore my last call like you meant to._ ”

“What?”

“ _I heard some very interesting things yesterday._ ”

Eren dropped the squirty bottle of mayonnaise. “What?!”

“ _I don’t mind, really. I mean. I wasn’t expecting it. Not really something I would have asked for yet._ ”

“I’m so sorry.”

“ _I said I don’t mind._ ”

Eren left the sandwiches half-made as he leaned his elbows on the counter at covered his face. Not that there was anyone around to hide from. “I… still. You didn’t want that.”

“ _Honestly? Not really. Which I’m still getting used to. But I didn’t hear much. I hung up pretty quick. And it was an accident._ ”

“Okay. God, I’m so sorry.”

“ _Hey, calm down. It’s not like it’s anything I haven’t heard before. Just, well, you might want to let Armin know, too. I’m pretty sure I mostly heard her._ ”

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll see her later, so… Um, what did you call for anyway?”

“ _Same as usual._ ” I like talking to you. I like hearing your voice. I miss you. “ _And I’m nearly done with Hanji so I’ll need to get your pictures when you get back._ ”

“Sure.” Eren picked up his dropped mayonnaise and, though still very embarrassed, went back to making lunch for two. “So um. You’ll have pictures of me and my dick in your apartment for the next few months.”

“ _Second thoughts?_ ”

“Not really. Just trying to wrap my head around that.” 

“ _Head._ ”

“Fuck you, that’s my pun!” 

“ _You and your shitty dick jokes._ ”

“Say the one with the dicky shit jokes.”

“ _Aren’t we a pair._ ”

Eren laughed. “I miss you so much.”

“ _Yeah, yeah._ ” Me too. Holy shit, I’ve never missed anyone so much in my life. 

\---

Armin knocked on the glass door at the rear of Eren’s house. When he looked up, she cocked her head to the side. _Meet at the end of the street?_

Eren gave her a thumbs-up and took the basket of food, also containing Armin’s sweater. He strapped it to the thing on the back of his bike and headed out. Armin, already waiting at the corner when he got there, had three blankets folded up and stuffed into the egg crate over her own bike’s rear wheel. They raced to the forest edge. 

“So I didn’t actually ignore Levi’s call yesterday,” Eren said when they reached the clearing. He bit his lips together, trying very, very hard not to smile. “I uh. I accidentally answered it.”

Armin’s smile fell. “You little shit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you better be. And while I’m already angry at you, don’t you _ever_ try and trap me somewhere like you did in my room earlier.”

“I -- you were going to jump out your window!”

“I was going to climb down, which I’ve done countless times, as you know because I’ve climbed up into your room after almost as many times.” She lifted up her sweatshirt slightly, as well as Eren’s shirt underneath; there were thin bruises over her lower ribs. “That’s what you did. Don’t do it again.”

“Okay. Sorry. I just wanted to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” She turned away from him. “I didn’t know yet that Grandpa was going to accept me. I did want to hear it if he wouldn’t. I was worried he was going to try and hurt me. Instead, you did, and you held me down in a situation where I could’ve been hurt even more.”

“I’m sorry.” Three big fuckups in less than twenty-four hours. Great going, Eren. Extra awesome on top. 

“I forgive you. I just want you to know that wasn’t okay.”

“I know. I won’t do it again.” 

They spread out a blanket together and ate their lunch silently. Armin’s hair, which by now was a very light off-white as the dye nearly faded out, whipped around her face in the light wind, getting in the way of her sandwich. She put up her sweatshirt’s hood and tightened it. 

Eren smiled at her. “Cute.”

“Is everything I do cute?”

“Yeah. Kind of.”

She sighed. 

“What’s wrong?”

She shrugged. “I just… I’m always _cute_. What if I want to be hot?”

“You are. They’re not mutu- mu- what is it?” He stuttered. “Mu-tu-al-ly exclusive. Damn.” 

“I know they’re not. It’s just that no one ever calls me that. It’s always just ‘cute’, and cute can mean a lot of things.”

“Well, I told you already what it means to me. You’re the kind of cute that makes me want to go down on you.”

“Again?” 

“Always.” Eren leaned in and snuck a kiss from her. 

“I’m still angry with you.”

“I thought you said you forgive me?”

“I did. Forgiveness does not necessarily cancel out anger.”

“Let me make it up to you?”

Armin rolled her eyes. “Fine. I expect you to do a _very_ thorough job of it.”

“I will.” Eren reached for one of the spare blankets and tossed it over them like a tent before he started to undress them both, very very slowly so their little hidey-hole could warm up before they were naked. 

He left wet kisses, gentle as can be, on the bruises he’d caused, mumbling apologies as he did so. He really was sorry. Hurting Armin was never his intention, but he knew exactly what he did wrong in his desperation. 

Sex, of course, would not make up for it. Only time, and Eren’s continued care, could do that. This was an apology; not a restoration. 

“Can I at least hold your hips down so you don’t choke me again?” Eren asked. 

“Yeah. That, you can do.”

Eren rested his palms on Armin’s bony hips, his thumbs fitting perfectly in the little dips there, and pressed down just slightly as he took her in his mouth, down his throat, like he had before. Her hips jerked, but she didn’t move enough to irritate his barely perceptible gag reflex. 

“Do it fast.”

Een looked up at her, made a questioning noise as best he could with his mouth full of Armin’s cock. He’d planned to draw it out. Extend her pleasure as long as possible. That was supposed to be a good thing, right?

“You heard me.”

So he did. He sucked her off as fast as he could, which wasn’t nearly as fast as she seemed to want; in-between her barely-muffled moans she called out “faster!” over and over, even when he clearly couldn’t move any faster than he was. Eager to please Armin, he pulled back until only the head was left in his mouth and jerked her with his hand. Almost instantly, she came, not quite with enough presence of mind to let him know. 

He swallowed most of it -- it just seemed like the obvious thing to do -- except for the small amount that had escaped his lips when he let her go. Eren didn’t notice the cum on his chin until he rested his head on her belly and it smeared against her abdomen. “Warn me next time,” he said. 

“Okay,” Armin replied, only half paying attention. “Come here.”

Eren crawled over her, stopping when he felt her hand close around his cock and start to stroke him. He tucked his head into her neck and when he whimpered, she shivered and told him, “Louder. I want to hear you.” He breathed harshly into her ear, and when he felt moans bubble up within him he didn’t hold them back; he could feel Armin smile when she kissed his cheek, apparently loving the power she had over him like this. 

After she said “Come for me” and he not only did that but also collapsed on her, Eren wondered as he came down from the celestial heights of climax if perhaps there were some tables that needed turning. His face heated up, and he tucked himself in closer to her. He could feel her silent giggles, and he ignored them. 

“You’re cute,” Armin said, and Eren groaned. “Now you get it?”

“I know why you said that, and it’s absolutely different from why I do.”

“Do you think I’m making fun of you? I’d probably do the same thing if you told me to come for you.”

“Really?” Eren perked up. He filed that bit of information away right in between Armin’s special-sensitive belly and the feel of Levi’s ass under his hands. It was a very nice corner of his head. Probably one of the most well-protected. Made for plenty of pleasant dreams. 

“Well, I probably wouldn’t collapse, since I’m usually on my back.” She giggled again. “What, does that surprise you?”

“Hmm, not really.” He dug his fingers into her sides and tickled her. She screamed, probably a little too loud even in the privacy of their out-of-town forest hideaway. 

They came back every day for the rest of spring break, always with food, sometimes with condoms. 

Armin did end up visiting Moblit again, to give him a piece of her mind; he apologised profusely, literally got down on the ground and begged her to forgive him, and she debated saying “no fucking chance” until he said he knew what it was like. So she let him off with a “you should know better, then” and an intention to forgive him when she was less enormously pissed off. 

Besides, he was Eren’s professor. He’d probably get an earful from Eren after break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title: “[New Perspective](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPHCeBg7oUQ)” by Panic! at the Disco.
> 
> (moblit was first mentioned in chapter 17 if anyone’s wondering why Suddenly Professor Moblit)


	32. Conflict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for all your comments! they mean the world to me. 
> 
> warnings: ableist language, characters responding with offense to offensive things, sexual content.

Armin had long ago decided to never take advantage of Eren’s memory. That would just be cruel, honestly. Getting into a friend’s password-less laptop or phone was funny until you knew the reason they didn’t have a password was because they would certainly forget it. 

However, there was a very fine line between what was okay and what wasn’t, and that line was drawn right after _Eren fell asleep with his phone on and open to facebook_. 

She gingerly slid the phone out from under his hand; the train bounced a bit and jostled him, and she froze, but he didn’t wake up. 

The phone, held in her hands, was down to about 10% battery, so she decided she’d shut it off after this, but. Oh, what to say? There was always the classic “I’m gay” but Armin wasn’t an asshole and Eren actually was, kind of, a little bit gay. Bisexual. A Type Of Not Hetero. And… most of his facebook friends already knew that. 

She considered some sort of drug reference, but all the slang she knew amounted to “420” and not much else. Organ selling? -- No, that was a little too harsh, even if no-one would believe it. Maybe if Mikasa ever left her phone on… But no, that was too harsh for either of them, especially considering… 

“Agh!” she grumbled quietly, trying not to disturb the sleeping boyfriend currently drooling onto his own shoulder. Armin looked over at Eren, seeing that drool. _How attractive_ , she thought, glancing at the wet spot collecting on his shirt. He was wearing the same shirt as the day they’d nearly been cockblocked by his dad. 

“Oh!” 

She tapped out her message and posted it, then shut off the phone and slid it back under Eren’s hand. 

Eren wouldn’t talk to Armin when they got back to their dorm. He still got into bed with her, though, and cuddled her to sleep. All was forgiven. 

(And he kind of thought it was funny too.)

\---

“Careful,” Connie whispered when Eren joined the lunch table the next day. “Kirby’s fucking pissed.”

Eren looked down the table and, sure enough, Jean looked ready to murder someone. He didn’t know this, but Jean had been in the same horrible mood since about halfway through the break. Armin sat next to him, whispering to him, probably trying to lighten his mood, but the sour look didn’t go away. He stabbed into his veggie burger repeatedly with a fork; it was already quite thoroughly mutilated, but he kept doing it. Then he looked up and saw Eren. 

“You.”

Eren was hit with an intense urge to run, run as fast as he could and never come back. “Me?”

Jean stood. “You and your fucking dick piercing.”

“Oh yeah, how’s that going?” The words were out of his mouth before he had time to think about the fact that this was obviously why Jean was angry. 

“Marco broke up with me. Because of the piercing.”

“What?” Eren was confused; Jean already had so many piercings, what was one more?

“Yeah. Fuck you. I had a great fucking relationship and now it’s gone. _And_ I can’t even masturbate for two months.” He pushed his chair back. “Outside. Now.”

Mikasa stood up as well. “Oh no you don’t, you are _not_ fighting.” 

“He was cheating on you anyway,” Sasha supplied, completely unhelpfully.

“WHAT?!” Jean roared. The room went quiet, and everyone at the other tables stared at him. 

Mikasa grabbed his arm. “Don’t go and tear his face off, now. He’s not worth getting kicked out. Or arrested.”

Jean looked like he was mad enough to ignore her and just go set Marco’s fucking house on fire, but then he deflated and dropped back down into his chair. “I can’t believe this. He said he was worried I would cheat on him.”

“Oh, God, seriously?” Eren whined. “Was it the bisexual thing? Because that’s bullshit.” 

“Yeah, it was.”

Eren gave him a sort of pitying look; he may not have particularly liked Jean but if nothing else they were Partners in Bi. Not, like partners partners. Just. With the bisexuality in common thing. Eren, within the confines of his mind, punched himself in the face for the horrible, horrible image that particular word inspired. God, _partners_. Gross. 

Jean dropped his head into his hands. “God, I’m so _stupid_.”

And everyone froze. Mikasa withdrew her comforting hand on his shoulder; Sasha, after a brief moment of shock, stood up and left. 

“What?”

“Stupid,” Eren repeated. “Is that how you think we act?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I wonder if I’ve ever not realised someone was cheating on me. Gosh, I don’t know, I must have _forgotten_ , since I’m so _stupid_.” 

“I never said you were.”

“But I am!” Eren shouted; not as loud as Jean had before but enough to turn a few heads. “The fuck do you think a head injury does to a person? Intelligence -- poof!” He made an explosive gesture with his hands. “Gone! Social skills -- good luck! Memory -- fuck you! I’m stupid! And Sasha!” He gestured after the girl who’d just left them, and ran out of the dining hall, clearly hurt, possibly crying. “You use words like that, and you’re insulting us, even if you don’t mean to. You should know better than to talk like that.”

“What’s wrong with Sasha?” Jean asked. 

Connie bristled. “Nothing’s _wrong_ with her, you turd.”

“I mean, why’d she leave?”

“Because she’s pissed at you, because you insulted her.”

“What did I insult?”

Connie rolled his eyes. He knew exactly what Jean was trying to ask, of course, but Jean already knew what the answer was and if he couldn’t put the pieces together then he could remain in the dark just as she so often was. “You know the answer to that. You insulted me, too, by the way, but I guess you didn’t know that one.”

“And,” Eren added, “You don’t need to know what it is that makes us stupid to know you shouldn’t say it.”

Jean put up his hands. “It’s just a word, calm the fuck down.”

“ _Just_ a word?”

“Words have meaning, you know,” Armin said. “That one means ‘of lesser intelligence’, and its connotation implies that something is less worthy of respect because of its intelligence. That’s certainly how you used it.”

“Okay?” Jean said. “I said I was stupid. Disrespect me.”

“But when you use that word you’re still involving all the people to whom it applies as a constant thing,” Armin explained. “You had a single lapse in judgement, but Eren and Connie and Sasha have to deal with their impairments every day. It doesn’t matter where you direct it, it’s still connected to them.”

“I can’t deal with this right now.” Jean stood up and slung his bag over his shoulder. 

“Then you better deal with it before you talk to us again,” Eren said.

Jean ignored him and left; Mikasa went off after Sasha. 

“Same as usual,” Connie said. He leaned back over his chair, stretching out his back, with his hands pressed to his face. “You’re lucky to have friends who get it.” 

“It took time,” Eren said.

Armin switched chairs to move closer to them. “Mhm. I pride myself on my intelligence. It took a while for me to understand that didn’t mean I had to put other people down if they weren’t as smart as I was.”

“Luckily I was in the hospital for all that time you and Mikasa were sorting it out.”

Armin cringed. “I don’t know if I’d call that lucky.”

“What happened anyway?” Connie asked. “I know you’ve got memory issues, and it wasn’t from birth, right…?”

“Memory and more. It was a car crash,” Eren answered. “When I was eleven. Cracked skull, severe concussion, and…” he fiddled with his silverware. “… a lot of seizures after that.”

“Oh, God.”

“You?”

“Dyslexia. I don’t mention it a lot.” He leaned back again and rubbed his freshly-shaved head. “I’m not embarrassed of it or anything, it’s just not usually relevant. Not like...” Connie gestured over his shoulder to where Sasha (and later Mikasa) had run out. He sighed. “I thought we were done with this after high school. I thought people here just got it. But lately… well, that’s obviously not true. Everyone is still calling shit stupid or crazy like it doesn’t affect us. It sucks a lot more when it’s a friend though.”

Outside, it started to rain. Satisfaction welled up in Eren’s chest as he wondered what the quickly intensifying downpour would do to Jean’s hair. Nothing good, that’s for sure. 

Mikasa came back without Sasha. “She’s in my room. I’m gonna bring her stuff up later.”

“She okay?”

Mikasa nodded. “More or less. She had a… a really rough break, and I think coming back to this was just too much for her. She’ll be fine, though; she just needs some rest.”

“What happened?” Armin asked. 

“It’s… not really my thing to tell. All I can say is some things happened in California and we ended up spending the second half of the break in New York with Kenny.”

“Your cousin?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t he kind of an asshole?”

“He is. But he’s an asshole with an apartment and a pull-out couch and a vested interest in keeping his family, blood or otherwise, safe.” Mikasa shrugged. “I’m not going to defend everything about him, but he cares and even where I disagree with him, I know he has good reasons to be the way he is.”

“Aww, that’s actually pretty sweet of you,” Connie said. “I’m not used to sweet Mikasa.”

“I’ll kill you in your sleep,” she threatened. 

“That’s better.”

“What are we going to do about Horseface?” Eren wondered aloud. “I mean, I vote we kick him off the island, but if you guys think he can, I don’t know, learn to be more respectful…”

“Wait and see,” Mikasa suggested. “He might learn, he might not. He’s stubborn, but he’s also got a good heart.” She shrugged. “It’s what Sasha would say, I think.”

“I agree,” Connie said. “He fucked up but if he apologises and doesn’t do it again then, well, I do like him. He’s been a good friend of ours until now. But if he gets pissy about it, you can go ahead and punch him for us.”

Eren sighed. “Fine.” He looked to Armin. “What do you think?”

“Um.” Armin fidgeted. “I don’t know if it’s my place to make that decision. You know what’s best for you.”

“Well, I think we’ve already made our decision, pending hearing right from Sasha. But I still wanna know what you think.”

“Honestly?” Armin hesitated. “I kind of want to see you rip him apart. Which is weird, because I don’t think I’m a very violent person and I do like him. He’s helped me a lot, sure, but that was really insensitive. I guess I don’t have as much of a tolerance for bullshit as I usually do right now.”

“I think we might all be low on bullshit tolerance right now.” Eren stared down at his lunch with distaste -- not because it wasn’t appetising, but because after all that he wasn’t entirely sure if he was still hungry. The white walls, white tables, and cold white lunch trays reminded him too much of the hospital, and the buzzing in his ears reminded him of seizures and panic attacks and coming off of heavy, addictive painkillers. And he’d never really been hungry in the hospital, despite that (or possibly because) he subsisted mostly on intravenous nutrients for a good portion of his stay. 

“Mm,” Mikasa agreed. She felt a hand on her arm, and without thinking, vision going red, she rose half out of her seat and took hold of that hand, twisting its owner’s arm until --

“Fuck! Mercy!” Annie shoved Mikasa off, only years of careful and intense martial arts training keeping her controlled enough not to use her considerable strength to flip Mikasa over on the table. 

“Sorry.” Mikasa let her go, wondering briefly who would win a fight between them. It had never gotten to that point, as many times as they’d snuck up on each other, and it probably never would get to that point, but she wondered it nonetheless. 

Annie took the seat recently vacated by Jean and took out her carefully partitioned lunchbox. She lived in town and as such wasn’t on the college’s meal plan, and that coupled with her gluten allergy meant she made her own meals. It was only after she started eating that anyone (aside from Mikasa, who’d had her sweatshirt-covered wrist in a death grip) realised she was soaked head to toe in rain water. She jerked her head to the side, unsticking most of her hair from her forehead and cheek and sending it, and a significant amount of water, whipping to the side. “So I passed Jean on my way over here. He looked pissed, probably since it was raining so hard the goop in his hair started running down his face.”

Eren raised a fist in triumph, even as Connie said, “He’s actually pissed because his boyfriend left him and we called him out on being an asshole.”

“Ew,” she said, deadpan and chewing on something leafy and green and smelling strongly of garlic. Well, at least they all knew she wasn’t a vampire. 

“Did you get a picture of his hair?” Eren asked. 

“No way, I’m not taking my phone out in this rain.”

Eren scrunched up his face. “Mikasa, can you get one in class?” He needed blackmail. Not that he had any idea what he would do with an embarrassing picture of Jean’s wet hair, but it was the principle of the thing. Having blackmail on someone you don’t like. 

“Oh, right, I have class with him.” Mikasa groaned a little and slumped over the table. “ _And_ we have rehearsal together. Shit.”

Annie patted the back of her hand only a little bit condescendingly, but that was just how Annie did things. She probably brushed her teeth condescendingly, and did homework condescendingly. She definitely had sex condescendingly -- or maybe that was just with Eren. “You’re doing Phantoms stuff again tomorrow, he’s running through Frank’s stuff. You can glare at him the whole time and no-one will notice.”

“What about Sasha?”

“She’s Rocky.”

“Oh, _no_.” 

“What did he say?” Annie asked. 

“He called himself stupid,” Eren answered. 

Annie made a face that was somewhere between questioning and annoyed. Which, mixed with her natural condescendingness, could have meant anything, so it wasn’t exactly strange that Eren was relieved to hear her repeat, “Ew.” And then she continued: “Are we in third grade? Flinging playground wood chips at each other and insulting each others’ differences because we aren’t allowed to swear? What a fucking child.” She sighed, though it was really more of an exasperated groan, just with a lot more breath because of, you know, the exasperation. “God, Krista will have a fit if she finds out. Want me to tell her?”

“I didn’t know you were so passionate about this,” Eren said. 

“I’m passionate about everything,” Annie responded. It sounded like a threat, and knowing her, it probably, somehow, was one. 

\---

Mikasa did send Eren a picture. Jean looked miserable, honestly, but it was more the expression on his face than the hair, down flat on top of his head and dripping wet. That actually looked… kind of nice. 

Eren deleted the photo. And then he slapped himself. 

\---

_I finished Hanji. Can you come by tonite?_

Eren kept fiddling with his phone throughout his Digital Art class. Professor Nanaba was really great, so interesting, honestly, but Eren had done rotoscoping before and. Well. _Levi_. God, he missed Levi. He’d already texted him back a “yes, i get off work at 7:30 so ill be there by 8” but he couldn’t stop staring at the conversation any more than he could stop the hundreds of fluttery insects trying to break free of his stomach. 

All too soon it was time to try his hand at the process, and he attempted to digest the butterflies as he turned to his computer and took a tablet pen in hand. 

They were starting off with a half-second clip of a ball bouncing, which Eren sped through even with his head running a mile a minute and thinking up all the different poses he could do for Levi and unfortunately, those poses became more and more overtly sexual and then they involved Levi too and _wow_ is it getting hot in here or what? Eren hoped no-one noticed the fingers he had expertly dug into his thigh, gripping hard at his ink-splattered jeans and the thigh-high socks beneath. 

Oh. Hey. Right. Socks. 

Like most of the clothing Armin had recently acquired, these came from the Shiga house free box. They had holes in the soles, which was probably why someone had thrown them out, but she didn’t mind patching things up especially if they weren’t going to show. But they’d been way too large on her, sliding down constantly, which was strange because usually the free box contained mainly very small items, and before she’d had the chance to toss them back into the box, Eren had suggested they might fit his slightly chubbier thighs. 

And they had. 

And they were _so comfortable_.

And he was going to take off his pants in front of Levi in a few hours. There would be no way to hide the mint green socks. He bit his lips together. 

But… so what? Hell, Levi had dresses on hand at all times for doing drag, he certainly wouldn’t judge Eren for some comfy, warm socks. And Armin had said they looked good on him, anyway. 

They were just _socks_. 

A buzzing noise signalled Levi’s response; _sounds good_. Eren’s stomach did a couple backflips. The butterflies multiplied. The socks were suddenly a little too warm. 

All though his work shift, Eren danced to the background music of all of Lady Gaga’s albums to date, hips swinging kind of excessively as he ran the dishwasher. Armin, after finding out what caused his good mood, just sort of chuckled at him every time she went to get some clean, dry plates out of the kitchen. At one point, unable to resist as he gyrated slowly and nearly humped the sink to “Teeth”, she slapped him on the ass as she passed by. He made a confused and rather loud noise, but then recovered quickly and winked at her. 

And then he kissed her good-bye and headed into town while she went to her night class. 

The bounce in his step did not go unnoticed by the other people on the street, but they went more or less unnoticed by Eren, who was much more focussed on his destination. And when he rang Levi’s apartment to be let up, he practically jumped up and down on the porch. The door unlocked, and he ran up the steps, out of breath at the top but no less enthusiastic when Levi opened the door and Eren pretty much body-slammed him before turning it into not the least painful of hugs. 

Levi was taken aback at first, but then he hugged Eren back and pressed his face into Eren’s chest and it was so, so nice to have him back in his arms. 

“I missed you,” Eren said into Levi’s hair. 

“Me too.” Levi lifted his head; Eren immediately went in for a kiss. Before it could get too much deeper, Levi backed off and stepped into the room, dragging Eren along with him, and closed the door. Then, he allowed himself to be spun around and pressed flat into the door while Eren kissed him hard, and then moved on to suck a very nice bruise into Levi’s neck. 

“You taste nice,” Eren complimented, and he really did mean it. Yeah, Levi was kind of end-of-the-day sweaty, but it wasn’t bad, and Levi’s skin always tasted… ahhh how to explain it? It was sweet, somehow. If skin could be sweet. 

“Thanks.” Levi didn’t tell him about the all-natural face wash in which honey was the main ingredient, which he’d bought specifically because Eren tried to lick honey off his fingers during what was technically their first date. But he only neglected to mention it because Eren didn’t ask, and his mouth closed over Levi’s pulse point again and _God that feels nice_ \--

“Wait,” Levi said. “I’m supposed to photograph you.” He could feel Eren’s pout against his sensitised neck. 

“But… I like kissing you.”

“I thought you were excited about being my lovely model?”

“I am!” Eren straightened up, looking scandalised that Levi could ever doubt him. 

“Photos. Then you can kiss me as much as you want.”

“Okay!” Eren backed away and let Levi leave the door. “Where do you want me?”

“Spare room. Come on.” 

He followed Levi out of the open studio space, down the side hallway, past the main bedroom and into a smaller room that was probably supposed to be another bedroom but was, instead, empty. 

“So is this a studio apartment, or…?” The sign on the outside of the first level said all the apartments in the building were studios, but this seemed like a much too large space for that, and shouldn’t it not have separated rooms? 

“Technically yes.” Levi taped on the wall outside the spare bedroom door; it made a noise that wasn’t as solid as Eren would have expected. “The interior walls are all temporary; so are the doors. If I ever move I have to take it all down. But it’s been like this since college; Erwin’s parents had some people come in and put them up for us. It suits me.” He liked the open-ness of the main room, but he also liked his personal space being separate from his working space. It helped that he had the biggest apartment; the floors below were separated into three tiny spaces each, but he had the whole top floor to himself, which meant there was room to fit walls in the first place. 

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Not in most apartments. Here, though, the owner doesn’t really mind as long as we clear it with her first. And, you know, everyone else who lives here.” Levi pulled a blanket, stark white like the walls around them and his own clothing, out of the closet, and spread it open on the floor. “All right, take it off.”

Eren stripped easily, not really caring if Levi was watching him but also kind of hoping he was, and yet not trying to put on a show for him either; it wasn’t the time for that. Levi did raise an eyebrow at the socks, but it was more in interest than anything else and he really thought that, coupled with the furious blush that appeared on Eren’s face when he noticed Levi’s interest, it was frankly adorable. 

“Nice socks,” Levi said. 

“Free box,” Eren mumbled. Stripping got a little less easy. Luckily he was only down to the socks and his underwear, and he just led it all drop and straightened his back. “Any directions or should I just do whatever?”

Levi took in and let out a very deep breath. “Lay on the blanket. You know what a closed pose is, right?”

“Yeah. Overlap, shadows, that sort of thing.”

“Exactly. You dont have to be fully closed, just a little overlap is fine, but there should be something to break up the line of your body. Find something comfortable. Even if you’re not going to sit here for hours at a time I want it to look like you could have.”

Eren sat on the blanket with his back to Levi; he laid down but kept his knees up, then crossed one over the other. After a bit of squirming, he crossed his arms under his head and looked at Levi upside-down. 

“You look ridiculous.” He snapped a photo anyway. “New pose.”

After about thirty minutes Eren settled into a pose that Levi immediately liked. Far more open than the rest, Eren laid on his back, sideways to Levi, one arm outstretched on the floor above his head, the other resting on his stomach, his fingers dangling, curled, at the opposite side. His left leg, closer to the wall, was raised, bent at the knee. Levi was pretty sure there was a hint of half-joking seduction in that, but Eren just smiled gently, relaxed. Apparently not even paying any mind to the limp but sizeable cock resting on his thigh. 

“I like this one,” Levi said after he took a photo. His voice was neutral. The eyes that roamed Eren’s body, though, were not. He took a few more photos.

“So what were all the other ones?”

“Practice.” Levi came closer. “Stay like that. I’m going to take some close-ups.”

Eren tensed slightly as Levi came closer. Levi noticed, because he noticed everything, and he reached out and ruffled Eren’s hair, rubbing his head slightly. Eren relaxed under that touch, and his smile came a little lazier, and Levi took about a million pictures before he released Eren from the confines of the blanket. 

He locked his phone when he was done and placed it on the ground. 

“Kissing time?” Eren asked, beginning to sit up. 

“Hmm. Put your underwear on, at least.”

He did, and at Levi’s afterthought request, he awkwardly put the socks back on as well. 

Levi sighed loudly. “Some day, when the time is right, I’m gonna fuck you in those socks.”

“Um?”

He leaned up against Eren and grabbed a handful of thigh chub in each hand. “Oh my god. This is my favourite part of your body.”

Eren released a noise that can only be described as a squeak. Levi, not nearly as oblivious as he pretended to be, continued to massage the backs of Eren’s thighs. “Haa… Levi.”

“Shh. I’m in heaven.” So soft. Soooo soooooooft. Slightly harder thing poking insistently into his abdomen was totally worth it because sooooooooooft. 

Eren grabbed Levi’s wrists and held them in place. “Levi, I don’t know how to tell you this, I learned what orgasms were because I did that to myself.”

He thumped his head against Eren’s breastbone. “Damn it.” He was really hoping it could just be Boner Time with none of that Responsibility. 

“You can keep going if you want, I just… I know you’re not…”

Levi kind of sadly let go of Eren’s thighs. Eren released his wrists and Levi cupped his face and pulled him down to kiss him. “Mmm, you taste good,” he said, echoing Eren’s earlier statement. 

“You’re being weird today.”

“Weird how?” Levi mumbled as he kissed across Eren’s collarbones. 

“Affectionate. You’re not usually this affectionate. Or, um, this forward with compliments.”

A completely unavoidable bubble of affection burst inside Levi. “Well I guess I’m just stupidly in love with you, then.”

Eren, with no warning, pushed him away and held him at arm’s length. “Nnnnnope.” At the sixth word, he’d stopoped listening. 

“I’m sorry,” Levi said almost immediately. 

Eren was thrown. He knew Levi didn’t like apologising, avoided it when possible, and he hadn’t even had the time to ask. “What?”

“I… reclaimed. Sorry. I didn’t even think about it.”

“Since when do _you_ get to reclaim a word like that?”

Levi looked away. _God_ , he was being weird. Affectionate, and now shy? “I was illiterate until I was fifteen, Eren. I got called ‘stupid’ all the time. Along with ‘crazy’ when the compulsions started.” He manouvered his way out of Eren’s grip. “I started calling myself that because people shut up about it when they noticed I wasn’t embarrassed of it. I mean, I was, but didn’t let them see it.” 

Oh. That… that made a lot of sense, actually. It suddenly struck Eren, not for the first time, how little he truly knew about Levi. “You… you’re sure talking a lot today.”

“I say what I need to say. I am sorry.” 

“I forgive you.” Eren hesitated. “If that’s why you say it, then you can --”

“No,” Levi interrupted. “It hurts you. I may like fucking with people but I know where to draw the line.”

“Oh. Okay.” He bit his lip. “You, um, you said you’re in love with me.” That had sailed right over his head at first, but now he was left looking it in the face.

“I did.” The butterflies that had earlier had a nice home in Eren’s tummy had decided to take a nice vacation in Levi’s. 

“So, um, you mean that? Like, you’re not falling for me, you’re, you’re act-actually in love with me.”

“Yes.” Levi’s heart hammered in his chest, but strangely, with no panic at all. He felt very, very calm. 

Eren took a deep breath. “Wow.” A few breaths passed between them, and then Eren reached out to drag Levi back into the embrace he’d been in before he dropped that word. “I. I don’t know what to say. I wish I could say it back.”

“Don’t say it unless you mean it.”

“I would never do that.” 

Levi absently rubbed his fingers against Eren’s skin, against the grain of the hair on his chest. His shoulders shook in what may have been the tiniest of laughs. 

“What?”

“Just. Thinking. I like my men hairy, but I’m…” Hairless as a Sphynx cat? A fish? Keith Shadis’s head?

“I _did_ wonder about that. Do you shave it all, or…?” 

“I used to.” Levi did his best not to squirm. That had not been a fun experience, though it had lasted about six years and at the time he couldn’t stand not to keep it up. “Laser hair removal, everywhere but my face. Spent my first commission on it.” And they’d been very thorough. 

“Wow… Everywhere?”

“Everywhere.”

“ _Wow_.” His hands twitched on Levi’s back, and Levi could tell exactly what Eren was thinking. “So, um, kissing?”

“Take me to bed,” Levi said. So Eren picked him up. Levi did _not_ shriek, but it was a very near thing, and Eren, with some difficulty, got Levi over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. 

“You’re heavy for your size.”

“Muscle weighs more than fat,” Levi explained, kind of distractedly as he had a very nice view of Eren’s ass and the thighs that had felt so very nice under his hands. Maybe he could make an exception to his no-sex-rule for those thighs. He considered reaching out for them again, because he could definitely reach from here, but Eren would surely drop him if he did that and one head injury was more than enough between them.

He let Levi down onto the bed as gently as he could and crawled over him. “You know, I got a lot of practice over break.”

“You’re not fucking me,” Levi reminded. 

“I _know_ that. I meant with kissing.” He smiled, and he bumped his nose against Levi’s before kissing him. 

Levi made his decision, and immediately latched his hands onto Eren’s thighs, back where they belonged. 

Eren gasped into his kiss. “Levi!”

“I know. It’s fine.” When Eren tensed up, Levi loosened his grip on his skin and just rubbed it lightly. “Relax. I’m telling you it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” Eren looked like he didn’t really want to ask, given that he was breathing hard and his face was flushed and his pupils were blown wide despite the bright lights in Levi’s bedroom. 

“Yes.” His naturally heavy eyes narrowed to slits as he squinted at Eren’s eyes, wondering if he was hallucinating or something. Levi had always remembered Eren’s eyes being bright and wide and beautiful, but somehow he’d neglected to notice… “Are your eyes different colours?”

Eren gave him an agonised look. Really? Levi was trying to start a conversation _now_? “Yes.” He hoped that that would be the end of it, but Levi apparently had more in mind that just playing with the fatty skin on his thighs and ass. 

They weren’t even remotely similar, which was the really interesting part. One was a vivid turquoise, the other hazel, almost gold. “Contacts?” 

A particularly high pitched whine escaped Eren’s throat as Levi’s hands ventured lower, grabbing the little lumps of squish above the backs of his knees. Levi’s questions flew right out of his brain. “Levi,” was all he managed to say. 

The man in question backed off a little, his hands coming to rest on Eren’s significantly less sensitive hips, though, damn, those were some decent love handles too. “Eren? Why the different coloured contacts?” He couldn’t deny that he was messing with Eren a little bit, but also, he was honestly curious. 

“My eyes are different colours,” Eren said in a rush. “Natural. Not contacts.

“Oh? I thought that only happened with cats.” Levi moved his hands back down to Eren’s thighs. 

“Levi?”

“Mm-hmm...”

“Shut up.” He sealed their mouths together to enforce his request. 

Without his voice to distract him, Levi’s hands were merciless, grabbing and pulling and kneading at Eren’s skin like he was testing the malleability of clay, not at all in time with their kisses or Eren’s gasping breaths (because there comes a point at which breathing through your nose just doesn’t cut it). It wasn’t until Eren broke their kisses entirely and his breathing pattern turned from _in-out-in-out_ to _gasp-moan-gasp-moan_ that Levi realised he was in way over his head, but too late, Eren had stopped breathing entirely, and sounded almost as if he was choking and, oh. He was coming. In his underwear. He hadn’t been exaggerating at all, had he?

“Sorry,” was the first thing out of Eren’s mouth, and Levi was boggled. “I tried not to, I really did --”

Levi kissed him, employing the same method of shutting him up that Eren had used on him earlier. “I said it was fine,” he said. In truth, he was a little stunned. But yeah, it was fine. It was really, really okay.


	33. Resolution Part 1: Omu-omu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good people make mistakes, and are responsible for fixing them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your comments on the previous chapter. to assuage your concerns and bring the next part of the arc i began last chapter, i rushed this one out. any errors are a result of that rush. 
> 
> warnings: ableist language, homophobic language, minor violence

_Who goes on dates on a Tuesday?_ Armin thought. It wasn’t judgmental so much as self-deprecating, as she, in fact, was one of the people involved in this Tuesday evening date of which she was questioning the logic.

Datemate Number Two was across the room, in underwear and a shirt, both nearly the same shade of dark blue, and trying to choose between two identical pairs of jeans. The only difference between them, in fact, was the shape of the ink stains; they were exactly the same brand and style. Did Eren have any pants that weren’t thus dotted with black and/or sepia ink? If so, he certainly didn’t wear them. Which made sense. He had some sort of art to do just about every day, and even the most careful of art had the potential to be messy -- save, perhaps, for digital art, which Eren did but only minimally. And who would want to risk ruining their clean pants? 

“Eren. We said we’d be there by six.”

“Uh-huh.” Eren continued to appraise his pants. 

“It’s five minutes to six.”

“Uh-huh.” 

Armin got off her bed and joined him. “Those.” She pointed to the pair of pants on the right, because the ones on the left had a faint but discernible line of faded black across the hips and crotch from ink collected at the edge of a drawing board, and wondered, not for the first time, how his pants were always flecked with so much more ink than his shirts. “Unless you have any clean ones.”

Eren laughed. “Clean pants? Me?” He put on the ones Armin had chosen. “Let’s go.”

The walk was familiarly short, but they still arrived --

“Late.” The intercom crackled. “But I guess I’ll still let you up.” The front door to Levi’s apartment building unlocked.

At the top floor, Levi was waiting in his doorway, leaning against the frame, trying very very hard to seem nonchalant. He kissed Eren hello, and then his collected air fell apart as he stood there perfectly still trying to figure out what to do about Armin. Did he… shake her hand? What the hell. _This is why I don’t date,_ he thought, among other things.

Armin hugged him. It was still weird to him that she was taller. Only by an inch, maybe two, but he really had thought they were the same height. He felt lips brush against his cheek, just like last time, and it was still so strange. Well, of course it was strange. This was only their first date, technically. It wasn’t even that much of a date. It was like… a test date. A not-date to figure out if they wanted to date. A date with potential. Date roulette. With Eren around, being extremely excited about this whole potentially three people dating thing. 

Levi kind of wanted to go hide under the couch. He hadn’t done so since he was about four years old, and he probably wouldn’t fit under there, and he had no intentions of actually following through, but he had the urge. 

Eren, who had forgone his contacts at Levi’s suggestion, wore incredibly unstylish and thoroughly smudged wire-frame glasses. The lenses were too big for his face, and the nose pads were a pale yellow rather than the usual clear and so they stuck out against Eren’s darker skin. He looked like a dork, plain and simple. Levi had half a mind to take Eren for an eye exam himself just to get him some new glasses. 

Still, Levi could see his mismatched eyes. That in itself was enough to make up for the unfitting glasses, he thought. 

Armin, he then noted, was wearing a dress again. Black and patterned with cherries, and slightly too large for her, especially around the chest. Once again, Levi had a thought of spending money, this time taking her shopping for something that fit her properly. The cherries were nice though. 

Armin broke through Levi’s thoughts, noticing he was looking back and forth between them. “Can we come in?”

“Yeah.” Levi stepped aside. His apartment and its plethora of oversized genitals greeted them. Foremost was a canvas covered only by brown blobs, and surrounded by print-outs of a very naked Eren. 

Being that it was front-and-center, and that she had seen most of the other paintings in the room already, it was to this painting that Armin found herself first drawn. “Glamourous,” she said of the photos, fully serious. 

Eren came up behind her. “My dick is gonna be faaaaamous!”

“Hmm, I wonder if I could do this.” 

Levi started to sweat under his shirt. It was a thin shirt, and his apartment was quite cool in preparation for the cooking that he would not be doing, so he couldn’t even attempt to blame the temperature. Somehow, getting used to Eren had not paved the way for interactions with Armin to be any less nerve-wracking. 

Eventually Eren made his way into the kitchen and looked through Levi’s pitiful collections of pots and pans -- well. Pot. And pan. 

“Hmm,” was his only comment. He nodded slowly as he tried to mentally fit their dinner into these containers. “...Do you have any baking pans?”

“Probably not,” Levi admitted. Erwin and Hanji had cooked here years ago, but they’d taken all their cookware with them leaving him with only the Ramen Pot and the Egg Pan. 

“Hmm.” 

“I can get some,” Levi suggested, as per their _Levi buys stuff, Eren cooks stuff, Armin washes the dishes_ arrangement. Not that he knew if he _could_ get some. Where did one actually get such equipment? 

Eren considered telling him it would be fine, they didn’t need it, but if he were to make dinner for three in a small skillet and a saucepan it would probably take him all night. And he was pretty sure they’d want to eat before ten. “There should be disposable aluminum grilling pans at a supermarket?” Maybe if he were to make a habit of cooking at Levi’s he could take the man shopping for some real cooking stuff, but for now that would do. 

Supermarket. Levi knew where that was. Grilling pans. Levi did not know what those were, or how he would find them. 

Eren could tell Levi was a little bit strained, nervous, but trying really hard not to show it. Armin could also tell, quite clearly, so she offered to go with him. “How big do you need them?” 

Levi’s lips twitched, and Eren started laughing outright. Armin, after a moment of internal judgment of the apparent twelve-year-olds before her, laughed as well, because what was the point of being an adult if one couldn’t be a little immature?. “Biggest size I can find. Got it.”

So Levi disappeared into his spare bedroom and came back with two short leather jackets, two helmets, and a pair of thick gloves. He passed one of the jackets to Armin. 

“Um, what?”

“Motorcycle.” He didn’t use it much, preferring to walk the rather short distances he usually needed, but Eren would probably need these pans sooner than the next hour, and in keeping with the pattern of locally-owned businesses dominating the town, the nearest supermarket was a half-hour’s walk. 

Armin, however, saw this development as less of a necessity and more of an exciting and potentially arousing adventure, bouncing in place as she put the jacket on. “Oh my god oh my god oh my god…” 

“I take it you’ve never been on one before?”

“Nope!” She tried to give him one of her habitual cheek-kisses, but, well, you know how it happens. Levi turned his head at the last second, Armin already had her eyes closed --

 _SMACK!_ their foreheads collided. 

“Fuck!” said Armin. 

“Ow, oh shit,” said Levi. 

“Are you okay?!” Eren shouted, attempting to sprint towards them but in the not-exactly-huge apartment only managing to accelerate to a sort of half-skip before he was already there. 

“Yeah.”

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t see you turn,” Armin explained to Levi.

“I didn’t see you try to kiss me,” Levi said, “So we’re even.”

Eren kissed each of their foreheads in turn, Levi first because he was closer. 

“I’m still excited about the motorcycle, though,” Armin ressured. 

“Good. Let’s go.” He helped her put her helmet on, and while her visor was still up he kissed her, on the mouth, because why the hell not? Honestly? Why not? Why was he feeling so weird about Armin? And then he flipped the visor down over her face so he didn’t have to watch her impossibly big eyes widen and her cheeks stain red. 

“Oh,” Eren breathed next to them, and when Levi looked he noticed Eren was staring, and his cheeks were darkened too and yep, it was time to go hide inside the helmet. An acceptable hiding place for one very nervous thirty-year-old. He went to the door, and Armin followed, and Eren called out “Be safe!” as they left. 

Levi could feel Armin’s stare on the back of his head, and the force of her smile, and he chanted _remain calm, remain calm_ in his head while he led her down the stairs and out to the little covered parking lot out back. 

He took the cover off of his bike (white, of course, like pretty much everything he owned, and a great deal larger than was really necessary for a person his size) and folded it up as neatly as one can fold an irregularly shaped motorcycle cover before placing it carefully at the bottom of the little detachable trunk. He got on, and instructed Armin to get on behind him and hold on tightly. And then he zoomed out of the parking lot. 

Armin definitely took that “hold on tight” to heart; as soon as the engine started her arms were in a vice grip around Levi’s ribs. She made some sort of excited noise that Levi couldn’t really qualify, and repeated it every time he turned or sped up. Which was endearing more so than it was annoying -- a vast change from when he had taken, for example, Hanji on such a ride. He loved Hanji, he truly did, but listening to them yell “YAHOOOOO” into his ear at every slight change got a little grating after a while. 

In the supermarket, the atmosphere was entirely different; Armin was still excited, but not shrieking in glee, instead leading Levi down the aisles, looking at the overhead signs until she found one that promised disposable cookware and found deep aluminum pans intended for both baking and grilling use. “Do you have tin foil?” she asked Levi, and he did, because even if he bought dinner nearly every night it wasn’t uncommon for him to need to wrap up leftovers. 

It was at that moment that Armin received a text message saying only _TONGS_. “He needs tongs,” she said to Levi. 

“Right.”

“Do you know what tongs are?”

“Is it a misspelling of ‘thongs’?”

“No.”

“No clue.”

Armin looked around for said tongs, assuming Eren would probably want the rubber-tipped kind he usually used at home. “These are tongs,” she said, grabbing one out of the multitude. 

“Oh. Grabbers.”

She stared up at Levi with her tongue between her grinning teeth. “I think I get it now.”

“Get what?”

“Why Eren calls me cute.”

Levi didn’t meet her eyes until they were back in his apartment. But then the whole front room smelled so good he almost, _almost_ smiled. 

“I started some of the stuff.” Eren pointed to the saucepan, inside of which something viscous was bubbling lightly. “Sauce,” he said, and then pointed to the pan, inside of which vegetables were browning nicely. “With vegetables and rice,” he continued. “The beef has been beaten and smellified, and it’ll go in the oven.”

Levi was pretty sure those weren’t proper cooking terms, but he wasn’t in a place to argue. 

“It would probably cook faster on the stove but I’d need a bigger pan.” He shrugged. “Next time.”

“What can I do?” Armin asked. She leaned against Eren at the stove. 

“You can do dishes. Later.” He kissed her head. “Go talk to him,” he whispered. 

Levi still stood by the door, hands in unreasonably shallow pockets, shifting his weight between his feet. Never had he felt so uncomfortable in his own home. Okay, that was an exaggeration. But he did feel uncomfortable. 

Armin linked her arm around his and led him away from the kitchen and into the open area with the couches that wasn’t quite a family room or sitting room because it wasn’t really separate from anything else. “You’re terrified,” she said as she sat them down on the couch. 

“No.” Yes. 

“I can see it in your eyes. And your body language. Everything, really.”

“How?” Levi asked. 

“You’re pretty easy to read.”

“You’re probably the first person who ever said that to me.”

“Can’t imagine why. You’re… subdued, I guess, but you’re not emotionless. You don’t need to be so afraid of me. I like you, remember?”

“Yeah. I’m not used to that.”

When Eren looked back over at them it was to the sight of Armin in Levi’s lap, her arms around him, just sitting there and talking and being in his space. Hugging him with as much of her body as she could. 

It looked really comfortable. And from the way Levi’s arms came up and circled Armin’s hips, he guessed Levi thought it was pretty comfortable too. He couldn’t hear what they were talking about over the stove fan, but he could see Armin’s lips forming words by Levi’s ear. 

This was good, Eren decided, and he really hoped they decided to close their circle of feelings because, wow, he would absolutely like this to happen a million more times. 

\---

Jean held an ice pack to his jaw. He stared, expressionless, out at the empty theatre seats, slumping forward in his corset, ignoring how uncomfortable it was to be in such a position while wearing such clothing. Or wearing such clothing at all. The edge of the stage was also not a comfortable place to sit, but he didn’t really want to be close to anyone else at the time. So he endured. 

He heard a sniffle, and then whispering, picking it out amongst the chatter of all the actors on break. His eyes narrowed infinitesimally. 

A hard-knuckle punch to the jaw was not a pleasant experience. In fact, it was one of those experiences that, for most, got worse the more often it happened. Jean, of course, had been punched many times in his life; by bullies, by cops, by himself. It never got any better. 

At least she hadn’t gone for the groin. 

His jaw throbbed. That hit had caught him right behind his chin, on the left side; his teeth smacked together, and he’d bitten his tongue quite painfully, but at least that bleeding had stopped. His teeth still hurt though. And the bruise blooming on his jaw was getting more and more sensitive. 

He sighed, and moved the ice pack slightly. His skin prickled, and that was not a pleasant addition to the pain. 

Ymir sat down next to him. “So. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“She punched me,” Jean said. It hurt to move his jaw. 

“I saw that. I’m going to talk to her about it next, but I want to hear your side first. Do you know why she might have been inspired to punch you?”

He sighed. He still didn’t get why it was an issue, he’d been too angry at himself (and at Marco, and at Eren, and at the universe in general) to really take in anything his friends had said. But he knew what the reason was. “I called myself stupid yesterday. I guess that pissed her off.”

Ymir nodded. “I can see why that might bother her. I’m not sure violence was the right way to handle it, but that’s something for me to talk to her about.” She stretched out, feeling the ache in her bones from stopping rehearsal so suddenly. “Do you get why it was a problem you said that?”

“Not really.”

“Did she try to explain it to you?”

“ _She_ didn’t. Some other people did. I wasn’t really listening,” he admitted. 

“Why not?”

“My boyfriend broke up with me. I was pissed. Eren was sarcastic.” 

Ymir nodded. She drew her knees up and tried to find a comfortable position. Krista may have been ten years her senior, but Ymir wasn’t young either, and she was feeling it in her improperly stretched joints. “I’ve been in your position. I used to call people that all the time; it was my go-to insult. Then I met Krista, and I met her family, and as much as she didn’t like her parents she was incredibly protective of her siblings. So when I called some random person an idiot, she punched me in the face. And by the time I told her I had no clue what was going on, a month passed and she hadn’t spoken to me at all. 

“And then she told me how people treated her siblings. They were both what one might call mentally retarded, though I’m told the term is being phased out of medicine now. But people treated them like shit, especially in school; called them stupid and the like. And not just them, but a lot of kids. Anyone who didn’t learn the way they were expected to. It hurt them, and not the kind of temporary annoyance some half-thought insult is supposed to cause. So I stopped using it. 

“And… well, not to unload all my personal issues on you, but not too long after that, I started having these psychotic episodes. I would freak out, and be completely not myself; I would see these grotesque creatures coming closer and closer and never reaching me, and not remember any of it after. When anyone noticed they called me crazy and thought I was going to kill them. I hated that more than the psychosis. 

“Do you get it now?” she asked. 

“I guess.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I, I’m still a little confused but. I think I get it.” Jean moved the ice pack a little. His face was starting to go numb. “I still don’t get why punching me in the face or ganging up on me was appropriate.”

“Maybe it wasn’t. But. Dyke,” Ymir said. 

“Huh?”

“Dyke. I call myself that all the time. But if someone else calls me that, I can’t stand it. I don’t usually hit them anymore, I took enough anger management classes for that, but Krista does.” She smirked at him, uneven and with her usually invisible wrinkles taking up residence around her eyes. “I’m sure you can relate, Mr. Bisexual.”

“Oh.” Yeah. Yeah, he could relate. He’d punched more than one person for calling him a faggot. 

“And it’s just as annoying if someone calls themself that, when they’re not any kind of gay, right? Because you know they don’t mean it well.”

Jean nodded. 

“It’s not the same situation, obviously. But, you know what a slur is. You know how it hurts. I get that you were heartbroken, and angry, and hurt, and confused. It probably wasn’t a great time for everyone to gang up on you, as you put it. I don’t know that whole situation, but I’m sure you’re owed a few apologies.”

“I’ll say.”

“ _But_ ,” she stressed, “you’re still responsible for your own words, too. And you can’t expect people to coddle you just because you’re in a bad mood.”

“Hmm,” was his only response. He knew that, he’d said similar plenty of times, when people tried to get out of considering their own actions. But being on the other end of it really did suck. 

“I’ll go talk to her now.” Ymir stood slowly. “You think on your end of this, okay?”

“Yeah.” 

She disappeared from his field of view, and he resumed kicking his legs on the edge of the stage and holding ice to his throbbing jaw. 

Jean considered himself a pretty understanding guy. He had a temper, yes, but he still tried his best. He’d thought his friends knew him better than to cut him out over a misunderstanding. 

If only Eren hadn’t been such a shit, Jean thought. It was like he’d been looking for a chance to tear Jean a new one. Maybe, just maybe, if he’d shut his mouth for once, they all could have resolved this in a civil way. He had no doubt Connie would have called Jean out if Eren hadn’t said anything; even Mikasa could be more collected, even if she was terrifying and protective. Armin had been calm, had explained what he’d done wrong, even he could see the fire in her eyes that threatened to explode outwards on behalf of her friends. If only any of them had been the first to speak. 

And if only Jean hadn’t used that word. If only he’d, hmm, paid a little more attention? Would that have helped? No-one had ever told him about any of this. Still, some part of him felt like he should have known. 

They were all in the wrong, he decided, just as he heard someone clear their throat behind him. 

“Jean?”

He turned and looked up to see Sasha staring down at him, twisting her hands together. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have hit you.” 

He looked down, but not entirely away. “I understand why you did it.”

“I still shouldn’t have.” 

Removing the ice pack from his face (and what an uncomfortable experience that was, as all the feeling rushed back in), he got up to face her fully. Mikasa, he noticed, stood a little ways off, glaring at him in that Mikasa way of hers. Ymir, too, was there, staring with significantly less hatred. 

“I-I didn’t really think about it. I just… I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you,” Jean said, awkwardly but sincerely. “I’m sorry for what I said, too. I didn’t… I didn’t realise it would hurt you.”

She looked away from him. “How could you not realise that?” she asked, barely above a whisper. 

“I don’t know. I still don’t really know what it is about you I was hurting.” He reconsidered his words. “I didn’t word that well.”

“It’s fine. Well. Not really. But I know what you meant. I-I’m autistic. Didn’t you know that?”

“I… sort of?” He knew, in a sort of vague that’s-a-thing sense, but he hadn’t really put a lot of thought to it. 

“I got called… _that_ , all the time. Especially in high school. I _really_ don’t like hearing it, especially from my friends.” Her hands twisted tighter. 

“Okay. I’ll… I’ll do my best not to say it again.”

“It’s just that you’ve never said it before,” Sasha said, rushed, and louder, more defensive. “I know I haven’t known you very long but it was a surprise. ‘Cause you never said it, and usually when people say it, it’s within… maybe the first month of knowing them, at the longest.” She hunched forward. “I let my guard down around you because I trusted you.”

“So you punched me?”

“Yes. I wanted to hurt you as much as you hurt me, and there weren’t any words I could say.”

Neither of them said anything at first. Off in their own little world, they also didn’t realise the rest of the cast had gone quiet, watching them outright from all corners of the stage. Even the crew had frozen where they were set up near the back building the minimal set. 

Then Jean laughed, just the smallest of chuckles, and held his ice pack back up to his jaw where it had started to ache again. “Well, you certainly got your point across. Nice punch.”

Sasha’s eyes widened, like she was scared of what Jean might say next, but he just sort of smiled at her as best he could when his face was turning to pins and needles. So she sent the tiniest smile back. “Mikasa taught me.”

He looked over Sasha’s shoulder, where Mikasa looked slightly less murderous. “Good teacher.”

Silence. 

“I have a question, though. Why didn’t you tell me Marco was cheating on me before?” That had rattled around in Jean’s head all through the past two days, bothering him more and more as time went on. 

“I didn’t actually find out until after I got back from break. You were already broken up.” 

“Oh… How did you find out?”

“Facebook. I think he only unfriended you; Mikasa and Connie knew too.”

Jean glared off into middle distance. “Two-timing bastard,” he muttered. 

A few more moments of silence passed. Some awkward staring ensued. Then, Sasha pursed her lips and threw her arms out to the side. 

“Hm?” 

“Hug,” she explained. “If you want. If not we can find some other way to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Show forgiveness.”

“Oh.” He took the ice pack away from his face. “Yeah, a hug is fine.” 

Sasha stepped towards him and wrapped her arms tight around him; he reciprocated as best he could while also trying not to hold the ice pack against her back. 

And the cast started clapping. Like, actually seriously giving them applause. Some crew members held their screwdrivers aloft and let them run. It was only then that Sasha and Jean noticed anyone was watching them. 

Sasha laughed first. She shook, and her arms lost strength as all of it went to her lungs. Then Jean joined her. Distracted, he let his left hand rest on her back. 

“Aaaah!” Sasha pushed him away, feeling freezing-cold water run down her back. “Cold!” 

“Sorry! It was an accident.”

“Aaaaaaaaah…” She reached over her shoulder and around her back to try and wipe at the water but, of course, it was in that one unreachable spot. Jean moved around behind her and, with his dry hand, wiped off as much of the water as he could. She shivered. 

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. You didn’t mean to.” She pulled up the front of her corset, which had slid down just a little in her slightly panicked stretching. 

“Can we get back to rehearsal now?” Annie called from across the stage. 

\---

For the second time, Levi awoke to two college students in his bed. Last time, however, Eren had been sandwiched in the middle; today Armin took that place. Levi wasn’t sure how spooning positions worked with three people, but he was pretty sure he was, like… the sugar scoop or something. And Armin’s all-over hug was very, very warm. 

Of course, it was time to wake the fuck up, as his phone alarm made very clear. He needed to shower and while he was reasonably certain his lovely college student partners (was that what they were?) probably wouldn’t bother, he wondered if maybe they might want to go home and change before class. 

He tried to extract himself from Armin, but she held on tighter, and Eren in turn half-consciously reached his arms out further to add to the forces keeping Levi in bed. 

“Oi. Wake up.”

“Five more minutes,” Eren and Armin mumbled together. 

Levi, despite his ability to get up at the sound of his alarm and even run every other day at dawn, was not a morning person, and as such was generally even more rude than usual in the morning. “Let me go or I swear I will shit right in this bed.” 

They let him go. As he got out of bed, Armin turned over and snuggled more closely into Eren’s embrace. 

The night before… well, they’d had dinner. Levi did not feel the need to break out any oversized dildos this time. Armin washed the dishes while Eren snuck around trying to plant kisses on her cheeks before she swatted him away; Levi was torn between joining in and not, and so he ended up just watching them. And then they moved to the couch, where after some shuffling and a bit of surprise on Levi’s part he ended up with his head in Armin’s lap and his legs draped over Eren’s, and Armin’s hands in his hair while they talked with the radio on as background noise. 

At some point they’d all moved to Levi’s bed, and he’d loaned Armin something to sleep in but Eren hadn’t even come close to fitting Levi’s clothes so he just slept in his underwear. Which was fine. Levi and Armin hadn’t slept in much more, to be honest. 

Before they’d fallen asleep, Levi whispered, “You know, you were right. I am terrified.” He’d been amazed at himself for admitting it, and then he continued: “But I like this. And… I want to keep doing it.”

Armin had kissed him again, and then Eren had done the same, and then they’d sort of fought over him until they were too tired and their lips too tingly to keep it up. It was bliss, truly. Levi wondered how he could have so thoroughly underappreciated kissing in all those years of mind-blowing sexual encounters, both the ones he’d done for pay and the ones that had come as a result of extended, painting-related socialisation. He was pretty sure the last time he’d cared about kissing this much, at least before meeting Eren, he’d been about fifteen and, well, that had been an interesting time in his life to say the least. Full of ill-fitted orange clothing and uncomfortable beds and surprisingly sturdy bathroom sinks. 

Kissing. Wow. _Kissing_. Good shit. 

He felt a pinch on his butt and realised he’d been standing there reminiscing for several minutes. Turning slightly, Levi saw Eren’s hand snap back under the blanket. Taking a guess which of the lumps in the blanket were Eren’s, Levi aimed a retaliatory slap at Eren’s thigh, and he was truly proud of himself when Eren released a small moan and burrowed closer to Armin. 

“What was that?” Armin asked blearily. 

“His thighs are sensitive,” Levi responded, as he entered his bathroom. “Have fun.”

He heard snickers behind him and one more moan before he turned the shower on.


	34. Resolution part 2: My Faith In Humanity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, neither Levi nor Armin have any idea what they’re doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was brought to you in part by rivarminfest prompts. 
> 
> warnings: sexual situations

Connie stared at his ceiling. He tossed a little plastic basketball up in the air and caught it before it landed on his face. On his desk sat homework yet to be done; he hadn’t yet recovered from his spring break, so he didn’t really feel any urgency to do it. Not when it would take him upwards of three hours to do what he knew was a pretty short reading. 

He hadn’t exactly had a _bad_ break; certainly not compared to Sasha’s family defending her abuser, or Eren and Armin’s incredibly nerve-wracking conversations with their only living blood relatives, nor Jean’s painful piercing and subsequent loss of sexual and romantic partner. But he’d sat in his room, bored half to death, doing more or less what he was doing now: playing catch with himself, thinking about nothing. At one point he had resorted to watching badly-dubbed anime that he vaguely remembered from his childhood, and wondered where the hell his Yu-Gi-Oh cards ever went. Yugi and Yami were a lot gayer the second time around. (Everyone was gayer the second time around.)

His phone trilled. He ignored it. 

Two minutes later, it rang again, reminding him of the text message he had so carelessly ignored. 

_Can we talk about what happened on Monday?_ read the text, from one John Kirby. The name in his contacts had been the same since he met Jean, and was too embarrassed of what he then (and still, to a degree, now) thought of as his own incompetence to ask him how to spell “Kirschtein”. 

Even after seeing Jean’s name many times, mostly on Facebook, enough that he was reasonably certain he knew the proper order of the letters, he still didn’t change it. At this point it was more for the sake of humor. Connie didn’t have any of his friends’ names spelled correctly in his contacts, and it made for some interesting nicknames. 

_Yeah sure_ , Connie replied, and prepared to move from his bed. 

\---

For the last two hours, Armin claimed ownership of a cushy yet stationary chair in Levi’s office, she and her laptop hyper-focus-synced together in the corner as she wrote a paper. 

Levi remembered his few unavoidable papers. They’d been a sort of torture, taking him entire days to write with up to five writing tutors, and then another day with Erwin over his shoulder, trying desperately to turn his word vomit into comprehensible text. Disability services at the time had been a new and mostly useless department, rarely willing to negotiate with professors on behalf of their students, so Levi had been one of many to suffer alone with his late-literacy self. 

Armin didn’t seem to need the help, and Levi was a little jealous. Even these days he found himself taking forever to finish what little writing he actually had to do -- and, to be honest, he made himself do a lot more than he needed because much as his thoughtless students pissed him off he also did actually want them to do well, hence his bi-weekly reviews -- but Armin banged out four pages like it was nothing to her. 

She finally sighed and closed her laptop. “Done.” She shoved the bulky thing into her already over stuffed backpack. “Didn’t your office hours end an hour ago?”

Levi hummed some sort of agreement. 

“You could have asked me to leave.”

“I could have.”

“But you didn’t want to?”

Levi shrugged. 

“You know, you’re pretty easy to read for being so closed-off all the time.”

Levi spun his chair around in a lazy circle. “You keep saying that. I wonder who you’re comparing me to.” 

“It’s not really a comparison.” Armin stood up from her chair and sat on Levi’s mostly empty desk. She spun his chair around to face her and planted her feet on either side of his legs. And then she leaned in close. 

“Here?” he whispered. 

“Afraid?” Armin asked. 

“ _No._ ”

She leaned closer to whisper. “And aroused. You think you can pretend you don’t know you’re afraid because they feel the same.”

Levi didn’t agree with her, but he didn’t deny it either. “Are you sure you’re not a psych major?” He’d heard almost the same thing out of Erwin countless times, though not… like this. 

“I’m sure.” She kissed him on the nose, and Levi went a little cross-eyed trying to watch her. 

“You’re taking all this pretty calmly.” 

“Not at all.” She sat up straight and pushed Levi’s chair back with her feet. “I’m nervous as hell, I just have less obvious tells.” Armin nudged the toe of her shoe against Levi’s hand, pushed deep in his pocket. “Eren told me about this one, but you also blink more. And when you’re confident, your shoulders are further back.” 

Levi took his hands out of his pockets and tried to sit up straighter. “So what do you do?”

Armin took his hands in hers and placed them on her thighs, just above her knees. 

“Um.”

“Shh.” She held his hands there. 

So he shut up. After a few moments he realised something shaking under his hands, and he focussed on that, and he realised she was tensing and relaxing her legs over and over. “Oh.”

“You feel it?”

“Yeah. How did you start doing that?”

“I used to bounce my legs but I didn’t like how everyone stared at me, and that’s just what happened when I tried to hold it back.”

“Huh.”

Armin tilted her head to the side. “But I guess I am taking this a little better than you.”

The sunset came in through the window at just the right angle to reflect off of Levi’s wall clock, with its concave mirror-finish insides, and it lit up behind Armin’s head like a halo. He remembered a text message from Eren, in which he mentioned something like this had happened before. Levi stared. 

He knew she wasn’t actually an angel, despite the light around her head that caught his eyes and made him think it. She had her faults like everyone else. But Armin, in the short time they’d known each other, had picked apart Levi’s habits like an omniscient, and while he was annoyed on principle that they showed, she didn’t make him feel judged. 

If anything, that should make him see her as less angelic. Weren’t angels supposed to judge you for everything you did wrong in your life? Well, whatever. Levi never went to church. 

And then the sun dropped enough that its reflection in the clock went out. Levi, no longer held in place by his illuminated new girlfriend, stood up and moved into her space. He wound his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. 

“What’s this for?” Armin asked. She didn’t mind, not at all. He wasn’t warm, at least not nearly as warm as Eren, and he also was a mix of pointy, bony angles and hard muscle, but hugs were nice no matter how comfy the person hugging was. 

“I felt like it.” Something dug into his chin, and when Levi moved a bit he realised it was one of the plastic connectors on a bra strap. “Oh. You wore it.”

“I did. It’s kind of uncomfortable,” Armin said of the bra, which was of a small enough cup size that it wasn’t really noticeable from the front. “I don’t think I’ll wear it much. But thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Levi had let her borrow it; he wondered if he should find humour in that he, a guy with a not-particularly-impressive collection of women’s clothing that was mostly acquired for drag costumes, was lending bras to a trans woman. Probably not, and he didn’t anyway. “You don’t think you’ll ever need it?”

Armin frowned. “Maybe. I don’t want to make plans about that sort of thing, not unless I think I can follow through with it.”

“What sort of thing?”

Armin turned her head to look at him, and ended up with their noses brushing together. “...Boobs? Isn’t that what you were asking about? Transition?”

“Uh, no. Not specifically. I meant more the mental part of it -- do you ever think you’ll feel weird without this?” His fingers trailed over the back of the bra through her shirt. 

“I’ve never felt like I was really missing it so far. But maybe. If that happens, well, I have it.”

“Do you want a bigger one?”

“Ohhh, no. That would probably freak me out.” Armin laughed, and it was more nervous reflex than amusement. It made her kind of uncomfortable to dwell on her own body. “I’m kind of surprised you had this one; isn’t drag supposed to be about exaggeration?” That was, in fact, part of the reason drag queens tended to unsettle Armin. She thought their exaggeration made fun of women like her -- and that wasn’t exactly an unfounded discomfort. Somehow, Levi didn’t come off as that kind of queen. 

“Yeah. I don’t really use this one for drag, though.” He didn’t actually bother with cross-dressing particularly often anyway. Just for special occasions, and there were far less of those these days. 

“Why did you have it, then?”

Levi didn’t answer for a while; not because he didn’t have an answer, but because he had several and wasn’t really sure how to put any of them to words. There was also the matter of trying to answer Armin’s question honestly and completely, because from her tone it seemed like a serious question that deserved a serious answer. Which would actually be the proper response in that case?

Apparently he took too long to answer, because Armin spoke up again to backtrack. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Well that just made it seem like a bigger deal than it really was. “I just wear it sometimes. For myself. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Oh.” Armin wanted to press him more for that, because from her perspective such an admission could in fact have the potential to become a big deal. But even if it _was_ actually something important, it was also not her business unless Levi wanted it to be. 

Levi, decidedly oblivious to Armin’s train of thought, was mostly thinking about how they had been dating for approximately three days and already they were sharing underwear. 

“Can I come home with you tonight?” Armin asked. “Not for -- Well, I don’t know. I just want to spend more time with you, I don’t care what we do.” 

“You sure you wouldn’t rather be with Eren?” 

Armin jabbed a finger into Levi’s stomach. It ended up being more unpleasant for her than expected, because rather than squishy love handles she was instead met with rock-hard obliques that she had somehow forgotten about. “Hey. I said I want to spend time with you. This isn’t a competition.”

“Right.” He took a deep breath and noticed Armin smelled really nice. Not in a way he could describe, just nice. “Yeah, you can come over.”

They stayed wrapped up in each other until Levi’s legs started to ache from standing still for so long. When they broke apart, they both felt cold. Levi realised this was exactly the kind of no-pressure contact he hadn’t realised until recently he desperately needed. Armin, who got plenty of said no-pressure physical contact from her rather touchy-feely friends, still wanted to pull him back in and not let go, but also realised they should probably get moving if she was going home with him. 

She shot off a text message to Eren telling him not to expect her back. Armin knew he wouldn’t mind, certainly not if she was with Levi; also, she recently found out he had been putting off some long-term projects to spend more time with her and she was not about to let that slide. 

Levi bought her dinner: savoury crepes and a sort of lamb stew from a family-owned restaurant that was a little bit out of their way. At Armin’s continuing attempts to dissuade him, he said that she could pay him back when she had money to waste, and besides, he _liked_ having someone other than himself for whom to buy dinner. The food was still warm by the time they got to Levi’s apartment, so they ate at his kitchen table before moving to the couch. 

Levi didn’t have a proper TV; what he did have was a ceiling-mounted projector, an HDMI cable, and a white wall. His laptop, of course, had Netflix. While both he and Armin liked the first genre that came up, it didn’t really seem like the right time for Foreign Horror Movies. The next few genre suggestions were also horror-related, and then a surprise -- 

“Critically Acclaimed Anime?”

“You shut your fucking mouth.” Levi scrolled down before Armin could get a look at any of the titles. 

“Hey, I’m not judging. I was a weeaboo once too--”

“I am _not_ a weeaboo.”

“So long as you don’t call yourself an otaku.” She wasn’t judging. She definitely was not judging. But she was making fun, just a little bit. 

“We’re not having this conversation.” Levi kept scrolling, ignoring Armin’s suggestion that they watch one of the suggested shows. 

They ended up in Campy Independent Sci-Fi & Fantasy, which was acceptable. 

Armin was taller, but Levi was heavier, so she ended up laying on top of him with her head tucked under his chin and her feet propped up on one arm of the sofa. Here, she could just about hear his heartbeat, which could never lie the way he forced his face to. Every time Armin moved, Levi’s heart would speed up for a few moments. 

“I’m not going to do anything, you can relax.” 

Levi’s heart sped up again. “I don’t think I’d mind if you did.”

Armin picked her head up to look at him. “I thought you didn’t want to.”

For a moment, Levi showed no reaction; then Armin noticed the very tips of his ears were red. How he managed to keep that blush off his face was beyond her comprehension. “Yeah. Well. I have no clue what I want anymore.”

“I’m still not going to. Not that I don’t want to. But I won’t.” She settled back against his chest. 

Before long, he was rubbing circles into her shoulders and she was trying not to squirm. 

“Are you even paying attention?” Armin asked. 

He sighed, audibly, and hard enough that Armin felt a bit of vertigo as Levi’s chest sunk under her. “Are _you_?”

“Yes!”

“Why? This movie is awful.” He took his hands off her shoulders and lifted himself up on his elbows a little. Armin shifted so she could look him in the eye. “You’re not even going to kiss me?” Levi mumbled. He tried very hard to make it sound like a whisper, but it didn’t. It sounded full-on nervous mumble. In his head, he cursed violently. 

“Did you want me to?” 

“Ye-es.” That was not a stutter. (It was definitely a stutter. _When_ did Levi get like this?)

“Are you sure?”

Levi’s narrow eyes narrowed further, and he pushed himself up enough to press their lips together. 

Armin’s arms, which had thus far been holding her up, wrapped around Levi and she fell on him; his arms, slightly stronger, did not budge under the added weight, but he decided to lay down flat anyway. 

The shift almost made teeth smash into lips, but Levi, very experienced in the matters of kissing while also falling backwards onto a somewhat soft horizontal surface, made sure that didn’t happen. Armin quickly extracted her hands, which were a little crushed under Levi’s back, and instead fisted them in his hair. Tight. Really tight. Tight enough that Levi moaned audibly. 

Armin backed off. “Oh, no.”

“What?” 

“Don’t tell me.”

“What?!”

“You’re a bottom too.” Armin had never thought of herself that way, but it was very true and also the fastest way to communicate what she was trying to understand. 

“This is not the time -- we’re not even fucking!”

“But we might, someday! We have to consider these things!” Armin lifted herself onto her hands and knees so she could get a good look at Levi. “Oh, god, how did I never think about this? Obviously out of the three of us someone is going to be in an awkward position, and you did say you were a sex worker and most male sex workers are bottoms, right? I really should have considered it…”

“Armin. Stop.”

“But--!”

“It really isn’t always so clear-cut.”

“Well, I know, but. You must have a… preference, or something.”

“I have a preference for being on the bottom, because, you’re right, I have more, uh, experience that way. But I like it both ways. Or any way, really. No assholes need to be brought into this equation.”

“But I thought…” Armin didn’t really know what she thought. 

“Please, do us both a favor. Stop watching porn.”

Armin’s face turned about as red as the hair of the newest alien in the movie they weren’t paying attention to. 

“Kiss me?”

And she did. Her lips were soft, her mouth warm; Levi’s mismatched thin upper lip and thicker lower lip were dry but quickly moistened when Armin pushed her tongue forward. Her hands went right back into his hair, tugging hard enough to drag another moan from his throat but not enough to break the strands. 

“I’d say,” Levi started, when Armin moved her mouth to his throat, “you’re doing a decent job on top yourself.”

Armin didn’t respond to that -- at least, not with words. She did bite his neck.

“Am I going to another one of your classes covered in bite marks?” 

“Eren got to do it. I want a turn.” She definitely made good on that; after switching back to his lips and kissing, sucking, biting at his lower lip until it swelled and started to bruise, she attacked his neck full force, bit him in one place and another and another until he knew that just a silly cravat would not be enough to hide her handiwork. 

A very familiar lump pressed against Armin’s stomach; pressed harder when Levi lifted his hips. “No sex, right?” Armin wanted to be sure he was still on the same page as her. 

Levi felt a funny, familiar flutter of questioning -- sex? Maybe sex? Sex sounded like a pretty good idea actually. Hmm… “No sex,” Levi confirmed, more for consistency’s sake. He really would have liked to fuck her. 

“...Clothing?”

Ah. Hm. Well, she’d seen him naked before. “Optional.”

And Armin stripped her shirt off right then. Levi only had a few moments to admire how the bra did actually suit her, despite that it didn’t fit; she reached behind her back and snapped open the hooks, then dropped the thing on the floor on top of her discarded t-shirt. She then stuck her hands under Levi’s shirt, and as soon as he gave her enough room she tugged it off and left it, inside-out, on top of the lovely pile forming next to the couch. 

Projected on the wall next to them, someone was screaming, “They’re here! They’re here! They’re breaking in!” But neither of them even realised the movie was still playing. 

Bite marks and bruises spread over Levi’s neck and collar, more than he really could keep track of. Armin was really going all out in trying to mark him up like Eren had, but she preferred to locate it all in a much smaller area. _Wear the thickest scarf you own, so that everyone knows you’re hiding,_ she thought, sucking on the underside of his jaw, making him dig his fingers harder into the couch cushions. _And it still won’t be enough_. 

“Clearly I have no clue what I’m doing,” Armin said after a particularly wet bite. She left his neck alone and came back up to his face. 

“But I like it,” Levi said, “so… keep going.”

“This is so weird,” Armin mumbled against Levi’s lips. “I’m not usually like this, I swear. I don’t get crushes this easily. I don’t get attracted this easily. I sure as hell don’t want to fuck this quickly.” 

“Not even Eren?”

“I’ve known Eren since before I could walk. That’s the definition of slow burn.” She paused in talking to kiss him deeply, trail fingers down his sides. “I wanted you so fast. For a while I didn’t, but then I did and there was no warning. I barely knew you then. Remember when we were switching off Eren between us? Kissing him? And I said your toothpaste was bubblegum-flavoured because I could taste it on Eren. I still didn’t feel this for you then. But then, it was only a couple days later. We were over here, just having dinner, and you brought out that ridiculous dildo and suddenly I was imagining you… with it…” She cut herself off. “I’m still trying to figure out why.”

Levi shivered. Armin’s lips may have been warm but her fingers on his hips were icy, or maybe he was just feeling the heat from her words and the chill from the room. It _sounded_ like she definitely had considered him as a bottom, but maybe he was reading too much into it… Either way, her fingertips on his ribs tickled as they moved back up and left goosebumps behind. He finally noticed, long after Armin already had, the stirrings of what promised to be a rather impressive erection. 

And with erections -- real, honest to fucking Zeus erections that he actually felt some sort of desire to act on even if he knew he shouldn’t, and wouldn’t -- came something Levi really wanted to hold off on showing to either of his current significant others. 

Armin’s thigh grazed over the front of Levi’s pants, and he knew it was an accident, but that didn’t change the fact that he could feel blood rushing down and his brain clouding delightfully and when Armin returned her mouth and teeth to their exploration of Levi’s chest, the moan that escaped him was not only loud enough to wake the dead but also significantly higher-pitched than any that came before it. 

“What the fuck was that?” Armin asked in a rush. 

“Like I said…” Levi tried to keep his voice steady, but couldn’t bring it down in pitch. It was second-nature at this point to act so completely wrecked so soon. “I have more experience as a bottom. And short, skinny bottoms in gay sex work have this expectation to sound…” He didn’t finish that sentence. He didn’t really think he needed to. “Just wait ‘til you see my acting.” 

“Should I keep going?”

“I might come.” He might as well be honest. It would take a while, but if Armin kept up the biting as long as Eren had, along with the touching and the legs in places they shouldn’t be because of the cramped couch and the cold apartment air turning nipples hard before they brushed against heated skin and each other ahahaha _why_ was it so fucking _cold_? -- it was totally possible. 

“So no.”

“I think… we should do something else.”

\---

They ended up on Levi’s bed. Levi had shed his pants, because it was difficult to straddle someone with tight jeans on; Armin was face-down and trying very hard to keep her moans to a minimum as Levi dug his fingers into her back. This was all a very bad idea, not at all an improvement to making out on the sofa, but they were a little too turned on to notice when they made this decision. 

“You have horrible posture.”

“That’s -- ow -- because I’m a college student.”

“Eren’s back isn’t this bad.”

“He does art. He has no reason to slouch as much as I do.”

“Still.” Levi pressed harder into her shoulder blades. “This can’t be comfortable.”

“Well, no. I have a lot of -- fuck! -- back pain. I’m used to it.”

“That’s not something you’re supposed to get used to.”

Levi’s personality-altering arousal had gone down, thank god, despite that he was basically rubbing it against Armin’s ass this whole time. Not on purpose, but it was definitely happening. The focus on her helped him tune it out eventually. 

“Hnn…” Armin turned her face into the pillow to muffle herself. Apparently, in her assessment, her sounds of pain were fine but her sounds of pleasure were embarrassing. (She, of course, was still stuck at Boner Station and her train home was very, very late.)

“You can make noise. It’s not like I haven’t heard it before.” Levi took pride in the blush that spread over her ears and down her shoulders as she remembered how he’d totally heard her basically screaming over the phone by accident. 

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” she mumbled into the pillow. 

“Suit yourself.”

Somewhere, in the back of Levi’s mind, he wanted Armin to make him uncomfortable. He wanted Armin to moan openly into his pillows, to shift her hips enough to show how much she wanted him and curl her fingers into his sheets to show how much she was holding back. He wanted her to push him, and he wanted to push right back and meet her halfway. 

He also knew he wanted this relationship to last, and that meant he had to approach it differently, more carefully, than he usually did. So even if he was ready to turn Armin right back over and suck her dry, he wouldn’t, because they’d only been dating for a few days and his usual was fucking sometime in the first week and getting dumped by the end of the month. 

And also… he still wasn’t ready for Eren. That still confused the hell out of him, but at the very least he knew he should wait until they _both_ turned him into his excessively lusty, twink-imitation self before he went for the dick. Right? That probably made sense. 

But even if it made sense, it was still… hard. Fuck, he was hard again. _Ignore it. Ignore it!_

Levi’s knuckles ground into the small of Armin’s back and slowly worked their way up, finding knots his fingers had missed and working them out. Armin clutched the pillow, probably undoing all his hard work with how tense her shoulders were. 

“Relax,” he said. 

“I don’t know if I can.”

The room felt too hot, like the middle of summer rather than early spring, even if she was aware that it was actually unreasonably cold she felt like her skin was going to melt right off. It was very, very hard for Armin to stay still. She was used to being around Eren, and following through on just about every tease no matter how badly timed, and the hard flesh between her legs was very badly timed indeed. 

It was also… kind of weirdly nice. Infuriating, of course, but also thrilling to try and hold back. 

Maybe they could do this again sometime, and next time it could lead to sex. Or not. Whatever. Armin was pretty sure massages weren’t supposed to feel quite this good; maybe it was just because Levi’s hands were the ones on her back. She wouldn’t be surprised if he aimed at every nerve that would set her body on fire. 

But… no. He wouldn’t do that. He didn’t want that. 

...Did he?

“Shit,” Levi said suddenly. His hands left her shoulders, where he’d been squeezing soft flesh to relax the muscles underneath and thereby driving Armin up, or possibly through, a wall. 

“What?” Armin asked, shaky. 

Levi leaned over her and kissed the back of her neck, and he lingered there. “I really want to fuck you.” His resolve to wait was crumbling, tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down… 

Armin rose up and twisted her upper body towards Levi -- yeah, there went all his hard work. “Are you going to?” she asked. “Because if not, we need to stop this. Like, now.” She was ready to accept either answer, as long as _he_ was ready to accept that, if they did fuck, she would most likely come within a minute after all the trembling, excited mush he’d already turned her into. 

“I don’t know.”

“Scared?”

“Maybe.” 

“Then you’re not going to.”

The urge to protest was strong. “Generally when I’m scared of something it means I should go ahead and do it.”

“Well, I’m scared for you, and I don’t have to follow that rule.” She gently pushed him away until she had enough room to turn around fully and extract her legs from under him. She sat with legs and arms crossed, leaving no room for him to try and change her mind. “Don’t do this to me.”

Levi could feel this relationship he barely even had crumbling like his own resolve had. Of course. No-one could keep up with him, not when it came to sex. He steeled himself, the bright shine of desire leaving his eyes for the cold, disinterested facade to replace it. “Fine.”

“Are you… angry? That I don’t want to fuck you when you’re scared?”

“No.”

“Then what’s with that face?”

“Nothing. Just my face. I’m used to this sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?” 

“I’m used to partners breaking up with me because I want sex more than they do.”

Armin’s expression turned incredulous. “I’m not breaking up with you!”

“You’re… not?” Oh. Oh god. What was this twisting feeling in Levi’s chest? 

“No. I just.” She rubbed her face, trying to dispel the burning feeling in her cheeks. “Maybe I shouldn’t make this comparison, but I guess… with Eren, it seemed like you wanted to, and then after getting to know him better, you didn’t, but you seem to think you will want to again someday. And I wonder if maybe that’s making a difference. I don’t know what you’re waiting for with him, since you obviously love each other.” 

Levi wanted to interrupt and say that Eren definitely did _not_ love him, but listening to Armin seemed more important. 

“You don’t feel that way for me. You’re still -- I want you to know I don’t mind, but you are still thinking of me like everyone who did break up with you. I assume you didn’t have the chance to care about them either. So I guess I’d rather… wait until this --” she gestured between the two of them rather than picking a more specific word “-- makes a little more sense. If it ever does. I _want_ to have sex with you. But I don’t want to rush into it. I feel like everything with you has been rushed lately… It’s not a bad thing exactly, but it’s confusing me.”

Levi watched her for a moment, expecting her to say more. When she didn’t, he scooted over to the other side of the bed and laid down. He waited until Armin shuffled around and laid down facing him to say anything more. He reached out for her chin and rested his hand on the side of her jaw, thumb stroking her cheek. “Okay.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” He shifted slightly to get comfortable. “I think… part of the reason I wasn’t like this with Eren is that when I was… sexually frustrated about him, I also was trying to make it go away because he’s, well, he’s young. So are you. I’ve more or less dealt with that by now, so I don’t have to go through that with you.”

“Then why are you still scared?”

Levi’s eyes left Armin’s for a moment, looking down, and then back at her. “It’s not really about me. I don’t want _you_ to feel like you made a mistake.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.” 

“Then you’re leaving something out.”

Levi said nothing. He blinked; once, twice, three times. 

“I’m sure you have your reasons,” Armin said. 

Levi’s eyes closed. 

“So what do you do when you’re not painting?”

“Hm?”

“We’re not fucking, so we should probably talk.”

“Oh.” He searched for an answer. His hobbies included painting (which was his job), fucking (which… used to be his job), and working out (which was not fun to talk about). Shitty horror movies were time-wasters. Being a mannequin for Hanji’s weird bondage stuff was more a side-effect of having lived with them. “I go to the gym,” he said, picking one of the not-work items at random. 

“I can tell. Can’t imagine when you fit that in.”

“I don’t sleep much. Maybe four hours a night; after that much I’ll just wake up. So I usually get up really early to work out.”

“And where does the anime fit in?”

“Holy fuck, I told you --”

“I said I’m not judging! I’m really just curious.”

Levi glared at Armin -- not too harshly, because she was smiling at him and it was really, really cute and how could he really glare at a face like that? “Usually during my workouts. I guess most people listen to music but I’ll bring my tablet and watch anime.”

“What’s your favourite?” 

“I don’t have a favourite.” More honest would have been “I have a lot of favourites” but of course Levi was very defensive of this particular interest of his. Too defensive for honesty. It was supposed to be a _secret_ , damn it. 

“Do you cosplay?”

Levi glared at her. He could not have held it back if he tried. He also realised that if she looked in his spare closet she could very easily find a few skin-tight or skimpy or pleated answers to that question. 

Armin sighed. “You really don’t like talking about this, do you?”

“I don’t really like talking about myself in general. Tell me about yourself.”

Armin’s smile faltered. “Um.” She wracked her brain for something to say. “I’m a history major…”

“Why’d you pick that?”

“I like history?” This had come so much easier last time. But then, last time they had mostly talked about Eren. 

“...Do you?”

“Well, I like it when it’s honest history. Which means I have to take a lot of non-repeating seminars and cross-listed courses, because the normal history track is kind of bullshit.” 

“What do you like about it?”

“I don’t know…” Armin could easily come up with a list of problems she had with history education but somehow stating what she enjoyed was more difficult. “I like knowing how cultures developed, how events influenced each other, making connections… I like looking at something I don’t have enough context to fully understand, because a lot of context comes from experience and I don’t have the experience of living in that time or that place. I like knowing that there are things I don’t know.”

“What do you--”

“ _Don’t_ ask what I plan to do with it.”

“Got it.” Some people liked talking about their plans; Levi certainly had, but that had mostly been because he enjoyed being a prick sometimes and making people squirm, and the conversation usually went something like _I’m going to be a painter. No, nothing else. I’m going to support myself on painting alone. Oh, you think we don’t make that much money and you’re worried about me? Great! You can buy my paintings then._ “What else do you like to do?”

“Read scientific articles about fish.”

“What’s your favourite fish?” 

Armin’s eyebrows lifted. “...No-one’s ever asked me that.”

“Do you have an answer?”

“Well, yeah. Pilot fish. They follow sharks and eat parasites off of them.”

“Would have thought it’d be one of those terrifying deep-sea fish you mentioned on the radio.”

Armin turned her head so her face was partially hidden in the pillow. “You listened to that?”

“Eren played it off my computer during my office hours.”

“What a --” She growled a little. 

“I enjoyed it. You and Ha… Hitch? Picked some good music.”

“Thanks.” She sighed. “You’re really putting in a lot of effort right now.”

Levi definitely did not squirm. 

“I appreciate it. But you don’t have to force yourself.”

“I… do want to talk to you though.”

“Then let’s talk about something that doesn’t make you feel awkward.”

There were maybe two topics that didn’t make Levi feel awkward. One was sex, which was probably off-limits, and the other was painting, which he was pretty sure Armin, being not-an-artist, didn’t have much to say about. Really whittling down the available topics here… 

“You’re generally an uncomfortable person, aren’t you?”

Levi’s silence was enough of an answer. 

“Honestly, you do hide it well. Most people would take your apparent confidence at face value. I think I only see past it because I feel it too.” Armin scooted closer, and Levi’s hand on her face moved with her. “But you must have something to tell me about yourself.”

“Not really. Not everyone is interesting.”

“But you are interesting.”

“At first, yeah. I seem like some mysterious guy with art that might be pornographic or satirical. Next thing you’ll find out is I used to be a prostitute, and then if you’re lucky (or unlucky) enough to get close to me you might find out something about my shitty childhood. There’s not a lot in me. I’m not… that _much_. I’m not like your oceans. I’m just kind of boring when you get deep enough.”

The hardest thing about hearing that was Armin often thought similarly of herself, and she didn’t have the means to dispute it for him. But it couldn’t be like that. Even if, in her darkest moments, Armin thought of herself as boring and empty, she also knew that no-one was really empty. “You don’t need to put yourself down like that.”

“I’m not putting myself down. It’s just the truth. I’m not hurt by it.”

“But I already know more about you than that.” 

“What do you know?”

It wasn’t said maliciously, only with curiosity but it still unsettled Armin. “I know you don’t sleep much. I know you have an anxiety disorder.”

“More like three, but okay.”

“And you’re insecure about it but you pretend not to be because you think it makes you seem stronger. You look and sound and act a lot younger and more irresponsible than you actually are; haven’t figured out why yet, but it has nothing to do with me or Eren. I know you’re in love with Eren and it’s the first time you’ve ever been in love.” Armin took Levi’s hand off her face and held onto it between them. “You bite the skin around your nails. I’ve never seen you do it but you have scars and scabs. I know you can’t sing for shit because Eren told me. I know you’re annoyed at most of your students for not taking their work seriously. I know you have trouble with writing. I know you watch anime.”

Levi grit his teeth. 

“And you hate that I know.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“There’s more to you. I want to know it all. It doesn’t have to be now, not all of it, but I want to get to know you so that this relationship can mean something.” Armin looked so earnest, so decisive when she said that and Levi didn’t want to let her down but he had to. Because she was wrong.

“There isn’t that much to know.”

“There must be something.”

“I’m not endless! You and Eren, you’ve known each other for years and you probably still find out something new about each other every day. I’m not like that.” He rolled onto his back. “Not everyone has a million layers. Not everyone is meant to. Sometimes we’re just a couple of uncommon jobs, a family we haven’t seen in years, a second personality that only comes up during sex, and a mental illness. That’s all I am. Everything else is just extensions of that.”

“Then tell me the extensions.” Armin moved closer, thought about rolling on top of him so he would look at her. “I want to know. I want to get to know you, Levi. Even if you don’t think what you’re telling me is important. I want to fuck you, and I’m fine with that being what’s important to you, but I also want to have a-an emotional relationship with you if I can and I can’t do that if I don’t know you.”

Levi wanted to know Armin too, know everything about her, and some part of him despite his many failed attempts at sex-centric relationship knew that it had to be give-and-take. But he didn’t have anything to give besides his body. Sooner or later, she would get bored; maybe Eren wouldn’t because he seemed content in appreciating what he already knew, but Armin would get bored someday, having exhausted all that was Levi while he’d only just breached the surface of the ocean that she must be. 

“Levi?”

But he had to at least try. “Okay.” He’d already told her things he never meant to. She already knew things about him no-one else did, even things he hadn’t known about himself. She was working her way into his life just like Eren had, only with different methods. In this tiny space of time she had become irreplaceable and unforgettable just because she broke down a couple walls that were never meant to be breached. It hadn’t even seemed to take her any effort. 

And Armin knew it, though not consciously. She would never call herself “unforgettable”, mostly because she didn’t have the right kind of personal pride to apply such a word to herself, but she did realise that somehow she had become part of Levi’s life. 

“Can we start again tomorrow?” Levi asked. “I don’t have anything to say right now.”

“Sure. And I’ll have plenty to tell you too.” Armin sat up and started taking off her jeans. “Do you have any pyjamas I could borrow?”

Levi pulled two large t-shirts from his nightstand. The one he passed to Armin was screen-printed with a cartoonish ejaculating penis, while Levi kept for himself the one with the enormous pink anime eyes. He sighed at his shirts; of course he’d pull these out.

Slipping under the blankets, Armin whispered, “Oyasuminasai, Levi-sensei.”

“ _Oh my fucking god._ ”


	35. Interlude: Hurricane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You might be surprised how often a person who is very bad at talking to people only knows how to quantify familiarity with someone by the amount of time spent talking to them. Happy birthday to me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from the songs by [panic! at the disco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wopMtfHDi6U) and [halsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR9G7ioLLmc)
> 
> warnings: mentions of death and mourning

_What surprises you?_

Armin often found herself surprised. Not necessarily with anything in particular; it was a sort of general repeated occurrence of many different things. 

Becoming friends with Eren and, later, Mikasa had been a surprise. Even at the stumbling, stuttering age of three, Armin had been confused why this loud, messy boy wanted anything to do with her when it seemed no-one else did. Even if they shared backyards, and saw each other just about every day when she read aloud on her back porch and he pretended, without much coordination, to beat up something much larger than him with sticks as makeshift swords, that didn’t make them friends in Armin’s mind but it apparently did in Eren’s. He defended her, mostly unsuccessfully, from bullies when they surfaced in kindergarten, and continued to do so long after Mikasa joined their group and taught the egotistical jerks to leave Armin and Eren well alone (at least when she was around). Mikasa -- strong, subdued, empathetic to a supernatural degree, and generally uninterested in academics beyond what it would take to pass her classes -- was pretty much Armin’s opposite, just as much as Eren was but in different ways. Still, the three of them _worked_ together. It wasn’t so much opposites attracting as it was each of them providing something another lacked, fitting like puzzle pieces. 

Armin had resented them for a short time, because she thought they saw her as weak and therefore in need of protection. But they didn’t. Of course not. They loved her, and they wanted to protect her because they thought she deserved better and because they were friends, and that was just what friends did for each other. She was just as important to their puzzle as they were to hers. That, too, surprised her. 

So had finding out the books she read in the third grade were intended for high-schoolers. She understood them perfectly well, but no wonder she’d always been bored by the literature assigned in class (though, well, so was everyone else). Her parents had always supported her thirst for knowledge, for stories; so why did Armin’s teachers always seem so upset when she used free periods to read her well-loved paperbacks? “Why don’t you read the books you’re assigned in class?” they asked, and when she said she’d already finished them, her teachers then admonished her for reading ahead. They expended more effort trying to hold her back than helping the students who needed it, and she hated that. 

Her parents’ deaths had, understandably, been a shock. They were young to die, too young to even have to think about things like death, but somehow they already had, as if they knew their work would someday take them somewhere dangerous, and something would go wrong, and they would end up drowning together somewhere beyond rescue. Letters to Armin, freshly updated wills, their studies unlocked, like they knew they wouldn’t be back to return the keys. 

Yet Armin never got any closure. The bodies were never found; presumed eaten or sunk too deep for recovery. Empty graves and a too-small family funeral were all Armin had to say goodbye. 

Maybe that was why she turned her attention on their work. She’d had only a vague understanding of her parents’ research, but after their passing she read through every paper they published and all the material she needed to make it make sense. It had seemed strange to her at the time, how she went into such a frenzy that summer, to the point where she’d ignored her friends until Eren dragged her out in late August with promises of a trip to the beach with his still-whole family. They’d made a sandcastle, knocked down said sandcastle, gotten horrible sunburns all around, and at night they roasted marshmallows over burning driftwood. Armin, managed, within that space, to be happy. Even though she looked out at the thing that had swallowed up her parents. 

Looking back, it all seemed natural to Armin that she would want to know what killed her parents. But she never found out. Not really. The research trip that had killed them was under tight secrecy, and all she ever learned of it was that after the deaths of four more researchers (one of whom had died before her parents), it was called off. “Unexpected risks,” the minimal letter said. “Our deepest apologies.” 

Deepest. God, the unintended, insensitively overlooked pun still hurt. 

Eren’s accident, and subsequent extended hospitalisation, were heartbreaking, devastating.

Armin wasn’t family, so she couldn’t visit unless Grisha, who still was Eren’s legal guardian despite his disgusting irresponsibility, signed her in. And Grisha was usually too busy for that. Too busy, even, to see Eren himself, though he worked in the same hospital. Mikasa pretty much lived in that room, because she _was_ family, recently adopted but still family; instead of going home after school, she biked to the hospital and stayed in Eren’s room until visiting hours ended. She promised to tell Armin everything, but there was nothing to tell. 

For both Armin and Mikasa, it was like losing their families all over again. Carla had been like a second mother to both of them, after they’d lost their biological parents, and she was gone. Grisha had never been the most emotionally open, but they still had loved him, and now that love was cut from their hearts and replaced with bitter hatred at his irresponsibility. And Eren didn’t even know. He lay in a hospital bed for months, hooked up to all manner of life support, with his friends looking on knowing that even if he seemed to be healing, at any time he could take a turn for the worse and be lost to them as well. 

Armin was away the day Eren woke up. Her grandpa took her on a car trip for the weekend to try and cheer her up. Her first action upon returning home had been to call Mikasa; her second action was to ignore her sleepiness and race the wind to see Eren with his eyes open for the first time in months. 

He could remember everything about Armin except her name. And that could be fixed easily. What wouldn’t come back were most of the childhood memories he’d lost, and his short-term memory was so badly affected that his best prognosis was partial recovery. Eren’s personality changed as well, in little ways; he was so much quicker to anger than he had been as a child, and so easily frustrated. It didn’t help that his memory gave him so much cause for frustration. The mostly collected adult he’d become since was a result of many years of getting used to his short fuse, and there were times when he still couldn’t hold back. 

Armin remained with him through it all. The anger made it hard, but he never, ever turned that anger on her, and underneath it all she could tell he was still the same Eren, but confused and scared and, post-near-death-experience, trying to live every day like it could be his last when his head couldn’t keep up with it. He was still Eren. Still Armin’s Eren. 

Realising, late in high school, that she was attracted to men was far less of a surprise than that other students called Armin gay when they noticed her staring; she’d already long since known she was a girl, after all. Realising, in college, that men liked _her_ was definitely a surprise though, especially since those first few men had almost certainly all been gay. 

Take Reiner, for example. Deeply stationed in a completely transparent closet, he flirted with men, stared at his best friend’s butt whenever he got a decent angle, but whenever anyone actually asked him if he was gay, he just smiled and said nothing. But he _clearly_ was. And so when he’d started to flirt with Armin… well, she ran. Even if, back then, she hadn’t been ready to tell him why, exactly, she didn’t want him wanting her, she still wanted to get away from him as fast as possible. Because she _wasn’t_ a man, and she refused to let anyone fall in love with her as if she was one. 

Maybe that was what did it. What made her take risks, dance in a dress to songs saying _you want them to see you like they see every other girl_ even though Eren could walk in at any moment. She didn’t want anyone to love her unless they loved her for herself.

And when she came out, Reiner stopped flirting. That was as good of an answer as she was ever going to get out of him. 

She surprised herself again with her feelings for Eren; her weird mushy romantic and sexual feelings that (another surprise) made her masturbate in _the fucking library_. She’d known Eren for how many years? All her life, really, and only at eighteen had she ever started to feel anything other than friendship for him. 

Sure, she always knew he was attractive. But it was different. There was a world of difference between thinking “my best friend is hot” and “I want to date my best friend and fuck my best friend and maybe someday marry my best friend --”

Holy fuck. Where did that thought come from? No. Shoo. We’re not thinking about that yet. 

And her feelings for Levi were surprising too… 

“But you already know that,” Armin said. 

“I could stand to hear it again, Levi murmured. 

It was late in the evening. Armin and Levi were wrapped up in a warm blanket on Levi’s couch, in the dark. The heating system had been out since the previous afternoon, and maintenance wouldn’t be in until the next morning, and late March in Massachusetts was still cold enough to drain out the heat from Levi’s top-floor apartment. The blanket and the shared warmth of two bodies was their only defense against the cold. 

Armin’s lips moved an inch from Levi’s neck. The urge to lean in and brush lips against skin was strong, but she didn’t do it, because she was committed to talking to Levi. 

“So how about you? What surprises you?” 

“I hope you don’t expect me to start from the beginning.”

“Whatever you want. Work backwards if it’s easiest.”

“Eren surprises me.”

Armin laughed. 

“He surprises me every time I see him.” 

And most of the time, Eren didn’t even try. He just acted as he was, but managed to surprise Levi with kisses and feelings and erogenous thighs and compliments and smiles and delicious food and hugs and emotional support and counted breaths and beautiful illustrations and intense determination and encouragement to spend time with Armin even if it meant less time with him… 

The mess that was his communication with Stohess Museum of Modern Art about his upcoming showing, well, that surprised him every step of the way. From their first contacting him, to his apparent several months only of time to work before the show, to the sudden release of tension at knowing he actually had a whole ‘nother year. He had a contract, finally, and it very clearly stated his opening day as _May 2, 2015_ , a little over thirteen months away. 

It still surprised him every time he got an offer to exhibit, whether he sought it out in the first place or it just came up out of the blue. Some part of Levi, despite his confidence in his work, still remembered his years painting grotesque aerosol murals with his sister on recently whitewashed walls, reclaiming the spaces the city bureaucracy wanted to keep for themselves. Returning a day later to find someone else’s tag in the middle of it, sprayed before Levi’s paint could dry -- and nodding, content, because that was how it was supposed to be. Back then he never would have imagined he would be showing in galleries and museums, sipping wines he couldn’t pronounce and talking to people who would have outright hated him if they’d known anything about him beyond his “beautiful brush work” and “courageous subject matter”. 

He wasn’t bitter. Certainly not. He was grateful for everything he had. But the fact remained that, until his arrest at age fifteen, he’d been nobody, the kind of nobody that proud governments wanted to wipe out, and it was by chance and a pretty face that he’d gotten to this point, where a single painting could sell for the cost of a semester at Wall and pay his rent for a year and a half and fund a private correctional facility or orphanage for --

Fuck. He didn’t mean to say that. 

Yeah, if he shared that with the world, he could surprise a lot of people. Levi was unkind, uncaring, unaffected, unemotional -- or at least he came off that way. But he put a good chunk of his money into the institutions that had taken care of him when he was nobody. Maybe, if he helped them, and if he could make those kids feel like they were somebody, they wouldn’t have to resort to his methods to feel special. 

Levi went quiet after that. 

“Nothing else?” Armin asked. 

“Plenty,” Levi said. “I was thinking.” 

Armin brushed her fingers through Levi’s hair. She got the feeling it wasn’t good thoughts. But he took a deep breath, pushed it out of his head, and resumed speaking. 

His friends surprised him with random visits, technically breaking into his home with keys they shouldn’t still have or even picking the lock (god damn it Petra, you’re gonna get my landlord on my ass if you keep that up) and calling for interventions he swore he didn’t need or feeding him cold chinese food while he painted through the night on a deadline he didn’t yet know was completely unnecessary. Levi did a quick mental assessment and realised he had 50% more friends this year than the most he ever had before, because Petra stuck around. That made three friends total. Some might find that sad, but for Levi, three was an overwhelming number and he wasn’t sure what to do with it. 

And they cared about him. They cared so much, and that surprised him. It didn’t so much anymore, but when he’d first met Erwin and Hanji and they had attached to him almost immediately, it was weird. The only friends he’d ever had before then were the fellow street kids he’d called his brother and sister. They cared because they had to, in order to survive, but Hanji didn’t have to and Erwin had every reason not to and the both of them had plenty of other friends, people who generally avoided Levi and his unpleasant nature. Yet they still liked Levi, considered the three of them to be best friends. How fucked up. 

Levi stopped again. “I can’t got back any further.” Anything that surprised him before college… no, he couldn’t tell Armin that. 

“That’s fine. You said a lot. I don’t mind if you still have some hang-ups.” 

“It’s not that. I don’t know how you’ll react to the shit that happened when I was younger.”

“What do you mean?”

Levi shook his head. “Don’t ask that.” He breathed out heavily, not quite a sigh, and his breath ruffled Armin’s pastel-orange hair. He brushed it back into place and twirled a lock around his fingers. “Soft,” he breathed. 

Armin smiled, and with this bit of conversation over she pressed her lips to the bruised collarbone she’d been eyeing. “You’re cute.”

“What?”

“You are. You do little things like that, what you’re doing with my hair. Makes me think you’re probably a big romantic softie somewhere in there.”

“Maybe I’m just trying to seduce you with sweetness.”

“Are you?”

Levi kissed her instead of answering. He shifted on top of her, tangled in the blanket, and felt her smile into his kiss. He was hyper-aware of all the little sounds inside their little warm blanket cocoon; the brush of the fabric against their skin, their clothes, their mingling breaths, the quiet and not-quite-describable sound of lips moving together. 

“Is this okay?” Levi asked, whispered, not wanting to break the delicate quiet. 

“Yeah,” Armin answered. “Yeah, it’s good.”

\---

Armin woke up in the same place Saturday as she had Friday: Levi’s bed. The man himself, fresh out of the shower, was towelling off his hair just outside of the bathroom. 

“Morning,” Armin said. 

Levi froze. “Um.” He looked down at his very naked and slightly damp self. 

“I’ve seen it all before,” she reminded him. 

“Right.” He still turned around. “Did I wake you?”

“Don’t think so. What time is it?”

“About nine-thirty. I usually work out in the morning, I just got back a little while ago.”

“You left me alone?” Armin asked, mocking offense. 

Levi turned halfway. “Uh…!”

“It’s okay, I don’t mind.”

“Oh.” He left the towel around his shoulders, and after clothing himself in enough to keep out the chill of the still-broken heating, he sat next to Armin on his bed. “So.”

“Hm?”

“I told you… a lot of things last night.” After a little kissing they’d gone back to talking, and eventually, he’d revealed to Armin a lot of what he originally had reservations talking about, because she made it rather clear that she could handle it. “And I implied some other things. Some of that, no-one else knows. And I don’t really know why I said it. But if you could, you know, keep it to yourself for now, I would really appreciate that.”

“Yeah. I understand.” She reached out for his hand. “I wasn’t planning on telling anyone.”

Levi nodded once. He looked as openly afraid as Armin had ever seen him -- which still wasn’t much. “I didn’t expect to trust you.”

“You seemed like you needed to talk about it.”

And he had, though he hadn’t noticed. In all the years since those events he hadn’t felt like he needed to say anything; not to his siblings, not to Erwin, not to the lawyers who tried to contact him or the cops who he wished had never gotten involved, not to the staff of his orphanage or the series of people whose professions he didn’t remember who had screened him to make sure he was ready to return to the Real World after his time in both correction and rehab. He wanted to keep it to himself. He’d only ever said as little as he could, as unaffected as he could -- and he could act _very_ unaffected if he wanted to. But it probably affected every choice he ever made. 

It wasn’t like Armin never went through anything difficult. Of course she had. Some of her experiences, Levi knew he could never hope to understand. And yet she managed to work with them… because she talked about them. 

“I did. Thanks for listening,” Levi said. 

“It was no problem. I said I wanted to get to know you, didn’t I?”

“That was probably more than you signed up for.”

Armin sat up straight and pecked Levi on the cheek. “More than I expected, but it’s okay.”

“Are you trying to comfort me with all this touching?”

“Yes. Is it working?”

Levi kissed her once, then tucked his head in between her neck and shoulder. “Mhm.” 

“Thought it might. You’re really tactile.”

“I’m not an intellectual like you.” His arms came around her, holding tight. “I prefer to hold conversations with my body.” He’d talked himself out last night, and he didn’t really want to get into all the details of who he was and was not tactile with. He figured she’d understand anyway. 

Armin, too, had talked herself out, because even though she understood the strength of her relationships best by the amount of conversation she had with someone, she wasn’t really the most natural conversationalist herself. 

Armin’s stomach growled. “Heh, well, I think my body has something to say.”

Levi usually skipped breakfast or, more recently, took some hand fruit with him on his way to class, so the two of them ended up cutting up a bunch of fruit. Armin fit two chairs side-by-side on one edge of the kitchen table so they could sit with their shoulders pressed together, to which Levi raised a single eyebrow. 

“Come on. I know you’re more comfortable this way,” she said. 

She was right, of course. Something about distance between two people who had been, or could be, very intimate had just never sat right with Levi. “You don’t mind?”

“If I minded, I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to do it.”

Levi supposed that must be true, so he joined her and they ate two-bite-sized pieces of fruit with their fingers. 

“I never asked…” Armin began, in between licking sweet, sticky residue off her fingers. “Do you have anything planned for tomorrow?”

“Not really. Why?”

“It’s Eren’s birthday. I don’t suppose he told you.”

“No, he didn’t tell me.” Levi traced an apple slice through peach juice left on the plate and popped it into his mouth. 

“Mikasa and Eren and I always do something together for birthdays, but after that I’m sure he’d like to see you. We can do something… the three of us, you know?”

“Hm. Sure.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “I should get a gift.”

Armin nudged her shoulder against Levi’s. “You buy us enough already. Besides, we never get gifts for each other.” 

“I was thinking I’ll get him some nice pens.”

“ _Levi_.”

“Think of it this way; you intellectuals can find your textbooks online for free if you want. Those of us who put our studying efforts towards art… well, we can’t do that with our materials. And they’re fucking expensive. Not the kind of price range a college student should be paying for pens and pencils.”

“The college gives financial aid to art students for supplies.”

“Then I’ll buy him a cake,” Levi said, decisive. “A ten-foot one, with a stripper inside.”

“Just get in there yourself,” Armin suggested. 

“Maybe I will.”

Armin burst out laughing. 

“What? I’m serious, I’ll get in the fucking cake.”

“I know you’re serious, that’s why it’s so funny!” Armin leaned against him. “I’m just… imagining you bursting out of the cake and giving him a lapdance, with -- with your emotionless look that’s always on your face. Grinding on him and looking completely bored!”

“I would _never_ look bored grinding against Eren.” He had to admit though, the image was a funny one. 

“I think you should. Just for the laughs.”

“I’d probably make him explode. I’ve teased that kid enough.” 

“Don’t say that. He likes it. Really,” she added, “it frustrates him, but he also likes it. He likes you.” 

For some reason that made Levi’s stomach do something that felt very strange. It kind of felt like it flipped over, but that’s anatomically impossible. It wasn’t exactly news that Eren liked him, but… well, he still wasn’t used to hearing it. No matter how much Eren said it. 

“I like you too, you know,” Armin said. 

“Yeah…” 

Armin reached up and pinched the bright red tip of his ear. “This is cute,” she said. 

Levi kissed her, in order to distract her. “You’re cute.”

\---

Eren heard giggling outside his door, then a knock. He leaned over in his desk chair until he could just barely get leverage on the handle, and let it ease open just a crack before his fingers slipped. 

A foot from the other side nudged the door open the rest of the way, revealing Levi… apparently effortlessly carrying Armin. “Hi Eren!” she chirped. 

“Um,” Eren said, eloquently. 

“I’m really not supposed to be here,” Levi said, and he lowered Armin to the ground. “So I’m leaving now. But, you know, feel free to visit whenever.”

“You’re our guest,” Armin said. “Stay.” Eren, though still a little flustered, agreed with her. 

“Okay, well…” Levi edged his way in after Armin and shut the door behind him. “Just in case your HR comes by or something.” He sat on the nearest bed, which happened to be Eren’s, and Armin sat next to him. 

“You can stay over if you like,” Eren offered. 

“Hell no. I may have lived on the street for a few years but I’m not going to stay in a dorm room if I have my own bed.” 

“You lived on the street?”

Oh. Right. Eren didn’t know that. “We can talk about that another time. Happy almost-birthday,” he said, desperate to change the subject before he had to tell his shit-tastic life story again. It was way too soon. 

“Thanks.”

“I can say it again tomorrow if you want.” 

Eren’s entire face lit up, and his eyes seemed to sparkle. Fuck him, what the hell, no-one actually sparkles. “Yeah!” 

“I thought we should try and do something together, after whatever Mikasa’s planning,” Armin said. 

“...Date?” 

“Date.” 

“Daaaate.” 

“Daaaaaaaaaaaaate…”

“Daaaa--”

“Ohmygodstop,” Levi interrupted. “Date doesn’t even sound like a word anymore.” 

Armin leaned in close to his ear and whispered, “Date.”

Levi sighed. 

“I take it you two are a little more comfortable around each other?” Eren asked. 

“Mm-hm!” Armin pecked Levi on the cheek. Half on impulse, he turned his head and returned the kiss. It was adorable. 

Eren stared starry-eyed because he also thought it was adorable. “I’m glad.” 

Levi, still leaning close to Armin, gave him a Look. “You better be. This is only happening because of you.”

“I don’t know if I’d say ‘only’. It’s not like we had nothing to do with it,” Armin said. 

“We still wouldn’t have done anything if Mister Extrovert here hadn’t pushed us.”

“True. Very true. Thanks Eren.” They both got up and crowded in on either side of Eren to give him two cheek-kisses at once. None of them were able to see this happen from any decent angle, but rest assured it was also very adorable. 

“You…” Eren stumbled over his words for a moment. “Aaaa you’re reading each other’s minds now?”

“Hm?” Armin looked up and noticed Levi had followed her lead. 

“It wasn’t that hard to figure out what you were doing,” Levi said. 

Armin made a face. Eren and Levi could both vouch for its adorableness. 

\---

Mikasa woke her friends at eight in the morning, much earlier than she usually forced herself to be conscious, with loud banging on their door. Eren, who’d slept on the side of the bed not backed into the wall, answered and got an aluminum pie tin full of whipped cream smushed in his face for his efforts. 

“Aww, what a waste!” Armin said. 

“It was about to expire,” Mikasa explained. “Besides, Eren’s always wanted to be pied in the face.”

“Mm-hm!” Eren licked a little of the cream from his lips. “But now I regret it a little. This feels gross.”

After Eren washed his face and they all got dressed for the world, the trio took a bus to the mall. They wandered for a bit, and then Eren dragged them to Laser Tag. No-one else was around so early in the day, so they just did a free-for-all, which Mikasa won, and then Eren and Armin against Mikasa, which Mikasa again won easily and in fact utterly destroyed the pair. 

“Go easy on me!” Eren whined. “It’s my birthday.”

“I am going easy on you,” Mikasa said. 

Several teenagers then joined them -- just enough that they could get everyone but Mikasa on one team. It was a close match, but she won again, and everyone was a little annoyed but mostly really impressed. One of the teenagers, who was fond of hyperbole, said she must be equal in strength to a hundred soldiers. 

And then it was lunch time, which involved mostly cake and very little actual food. 

After that, they went back to campus; Mikasa had to get to rehearsal for what was rapidly becoming a much more over-the-top production than a weird and kind of fucked-up cult “classic” really needed. 

Levi met them at the bus stop in town, while Mikasa went on to the stop on campus. He hadn't been waiting there all day, or even for very long, but he thought about heading out every five minutes or so since he woke up that morning. It was terribly distracting, especially at the gym at four in the morning but also while painting and while planning his next class. So he ended up in front of the bus stop a half-hour early, crossing his arms under his short green cape-coat-thing and glaring at anyone who got too close. 

Eren, who had been nearly bouncing in his bus seat the whole ride back in excitement, took advantage of Levi's strength by jumping on him and wrapping his legs around Levi's waist. Levi caught him, but barely, hands under Eren's ass and with a loud grunt. 

"Levi!" Eren rubbed his face against Levi's, like a cat trying to leave its scent on something it believed belonged to it. "I missed you."

"You just saw me yesterday."

"Yeah, and I missed you."

Levi sighed, angling it so he blew warm air directly into Eren's ear and made him squirm. "Happy birthday."

"Thaaaaaank yooooooouuuu!" 

"Now get down."

"Aw."

Eren did get down, and when he did he linked hands with Armin and the two of them followed Levi into town. 

"What are we doing?" Eren asked, excited. 

"You'll see. What did you do with Mikasa?"

"Laser tag!" Eren and Armin launched into a play-by-play of the entire experience, filling the Sunday air with chatter as the three of them headed through the sort-of-downtown area, out past the bridge, and into a slightly more residential area. There were still shops here and there, as well as a rather large art gallery, much more impressively sized than the one in town. 

"Here we are." 

Levi stopped in front of a fountain -- or rather, what would have been a fountain had the plumbing been turned on. At the moment, it was just a large modern art piece, an abstract copper sculpture about ten meters tall in a sunken area of concrete and shale tile. He looked up towards the roof of the adjacent building, opposite the gallery, and waved; after a few moments, water began to spout from the sprayers at the top of the sculpture. 

"Well that's just showing off," Armin joked. 

Levi shrugged. "A friend of mine works here, and they wanted to meet you two. They'll be down in a few minutes. The rest of the day is just for the three of us though." 

"THEY'RE ADORABLE!!!"

Levi smirked just slightly as he faced the noise. "Well I sure hope so; if you'd said they weren't I'd tell you to get new glasses."

Hanji came to a wobbly halt in front of Eren and Armin, brushing right past Levi to get to them. "God, I hope he's treating you two well, you just ooooooooze sweetness. He's not corrupting you, is he? Not too many dicks in his house, too many insults in his vocabulary?" 

"Not at all!" Armin said, while Eren laughed. 

"Good. If he changes, though, you tell me and I'll set him right, okay?" They added in a hand gesture involving throwing one fist at the other open palm. "I'm here for you." 

"Wha... There's no need to hurt him!"

"Oh, he enjoys it." Hanji said, in a tone that indicated full seriousness. 

Levi interrupted before they revealed anything else. “Shut _up_ , Hanji. They don't need to know that.” 

“Wait, but, I already knew that,” Eren said, and Armin backed him up. Between the biting and the hair-pulling… well. 

“This is why I put off introducing you,” Levi grumbled. 

“How do you like my fountain?” Hanji asked, completely ignoring Levi’s annoyed grumblings. 

“Your fountain?” Eren asked. 

“Well. I call it mine. It’s based on my research. My, uh, group’s research. The group which I belong to and of which I am sadly not the head, but they all hate the sculpture and I love it and I was the only one in the day the artist installed it, so it’s mine.”

“That’s really cool. I never would have guessed it was representational,” Armin said. 

“What’s your research?” Eren asked. 

Hanji’s grin stretched impossibly wider. “My research?”

Levi, unnoticed except by Armin, began to back away. She watched him go with increasing uncertainty in her eyes, until Eren grabbed his arm and made him stay. 

And then Hanji started talking. And didn’t stop. 

\---

Levi zoned out through the explanation, but returned mentally after about an hour, having heard Hanji’s explanation of their extremely underfunded cancer treatment research enough times that he could pretty accurately predict when they would run out of steam enough for interjection. What he didn’t expect was two fully engaged young adults seated next to him on the ground with Hanji, the three of them cross-legged and seemingly comfortable whereas Levi was stretched out and spacing. Hanji talked animatedly, full of hand gestures, sometimes sketching out relevant images in their pocket notebook. Eren and Armin asked questions for clarification, as this was completely out of their ranges of knowledge, and Hanji supplied answers with increasing excitement (Hanji didn’t really have an excitement cap). 

Ah. Well. That threw a wrench in Levi’s plans. If they were asking questions, Hanji could be anywhere in their explanations -- and probably would never run out of stamina. He thought, not for the first time, than Hanji would make a great teacher; certainly better than him. 

Levi joined them, scooting closer on the ground (dusty, probably going to ruin his pants, god damn it). Hanji was in the middle of an explanation of something Levi had never heard before, with long, chemical-sounding words he could make no sense of, but Eren and Armin looked completely engrossed. 

“Nice of you to join us, Levi. You’re just in time for --”

“You know, I had plans for today.”

Hanji huffed. “Do you have no shame? Being so rude to me, your friend, right in front of these lovely people.” They shook their head. 

“You treat me the same damn way.”

Eren wrapped a hand around Levi’s arm and pulled him in close. “I’d like to hear more, Hanji, but I think Levi’s getting impatient for my birthday-part-two.” 

Hanji brightened once again. “You should come by! Get my number from Levi, I can let you in if you call and then I can show you all the actual research.”

“Isn’t it classified or anything while it’s in progress?” Armin asked. 

“Well, yeah. But you’re not going to do anything with it.” Hanji got up off the dusty ground and waved goodbye. “Back to work for me!”

“You were working?”

“Eh, sort of. The interns are there, it’s fine.” 

Perhaps… they’d be less of a great teacher than Levi originally thought. 

“What did you have planned?” Eren asked Levi, after Hanji was back inside. 

“I was going to jump out of a cake and strip for you, but it looks like we missed the appointment.”

“Appointment?” Eren asked, while Armin lost it laughing. 

“What, you think I can just hop in a cake whenever I like? There are _rules_. But no, now we’re going to Mastery.”

“Wha--”

“ _Levi_!” Armin whined. “I told you about this…”

“I am not beholden to your weird presentless birthday rules. I have money, you’re getting art supplies,” he said to Eren, and to Armin: “I’ll do something nice for your birthday too when it comes around. And no need to return the favour.”

“You can’t get me anything if I don’t tell you what I want,” Eren said, defiantly, before realising that yes Levi can. 

“Yes I can. I know what kind of paper you use, and your preferred brand of millimeter pens, and the types of compressed charcoal you need for class. And since you told me you’re planning to take Etching next year, I’ll get you some BFK paper, too; I’d get you copper but I don’t know what gauge you’re supposed to have. Or you can look for stuff you want to try out but can’t afford or rationalise to the student aid society. Your choice; you’re getting a present either way.”

“Can’t I just have you as my present?”

That was really sweet, and Levi almost gave in to him. Instead, he teased, “You should’ve thought of that before we missed the cake appointment.”

Inside the rather small store, filled to the brim with fine art supplies, the air was dry and rather cold but warmer than the outside, if not by much. A gray-haired man sketched in sepia conte at the checkout counter. After a moment of deliberation and much biting of the lower lip, Eren headed off into the drawing supplies with Armin. Levi detoured into paints, not because he needed more -- he’d bought the goddamn acrylics in bulk -- but because he could use some new brushes and also he didn’t feel right following them around. Which was probably ridiculous, he realised, as they wouldn’t so often go out of their way to spend time with him if they didn’t want to, buuut still. 

“Levi?” Eren called. 

Levi turned the corner at the end of the paint aisle and saw Eren looking around the end of another aisle for him. “I’m over here.”

“Oh. I thought you were going to stay with us. You don’t have to if you’re looking for stuff.”

Well, the brushes could wait. “I’m coming.” 

Eren ended up with a pad of honestly really nice mixed media paper and a new set of millimeter pens. That was all he intended to ask for, but his eyes caught a stack of _UNSORTED SCREENTONE HALF-PRICE_ and after he pretended not to stare for a few minutes, looking around at the surrounding loose paper, Levi swiped them all into a basket. 

“Levi!”

“Shut it. You want to make comics, don’t you?”

“Oh my god, you better give Armin something this good too.”

“Eren!” she whisper-shouted. 

“What is it with kids these days trying to turn down gifts and money?” Levi wondered aloud. “Armin, please, let me get you a gift when your birthday comes around.”

“You’re spoiling us.”

“Yes. I am. I’ll get you whatever you want.”

“God,” she mumbled, dragging Eren towards the register, “I could probably ask you for a vagina and you’d write me a check.”

“How do you spell your last name?” Levi asked, and when she turned back to him, he had his checkbook out and clicked open a pen. 

“I don’t want a vagina!” she said, just a bit too loudly, and the cashier looked up from his sketches. 

“...You need any help back there?” he asked, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. 

“We’re fine.” Levi lowered his hands, but kept his checkbook out. “I think we’re ready to pay. Unless the birthday boy wants anything else.”

“I’m good!” Eren choked out, and he left his paper and pens on the counter next to the basket of screentone the Levi brought up. 

The cashier rang them up and, at Levi’s request, didn’t tell them what the total was; he just showed Levi the end of the receipt paper and Levi wrote out a check for it. 

The man looked over the check to make sure it was filled out properly, as he always did, but the name on it stopped him short. “ _Ackerman_?” he choked out. 

“Not me,” Levi said in a monotone, taking the bags in hand and readying himself to make a run for it.

“Oh, god, it really is you; I thought Petra was pulling my leg!”

Fuck. Well. He couldn’t leave now. “Oh. You’re, you’re her boyfriend, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, my name is Oluo, I’m so… Wow.” Oluo put out his hand, thankfully not the one covered in conte dust. 

Levi took his hand and shook it once, offering no smile, because he didn’t smile. Ever. (Except at Eren and Armin but that was different, they were special). 

“I’m so glad I got to meet you! You’re, well, you’re the reason I started painting, and I’m pretty good if I do say so myself…” 

Levi cut him off. “Yeah, listen, we’re a little busy. I have a show coming up, I’ll give Petra the details, we can talk more then.”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” Oluo began to look a little more uncertain. “Well, uh, have fun?”

Levi nodded at him, and then turned tail and more or less fled the store, bags in hand, ushering his partners out ahead of him. 

“Okay!” Levi said once outside. “Free ice cream, right?” 

Eren and Armin both stared at him, confused. 

“You get free ice cream on your birthday at… fuck it, I don’t know the name, I just know where it is and I only ever go there on birthdays.” 

“Are you okay?” Armin asked. 

“I don’t like meeting my fans. Normally I wouldn’t admit that, but I’ve told you two plenty so far and I really want to be anywhere that isn’t here right now. So ice cream.”

“Ice cream,” the pair repeated. As they headed back towards town, Armin asked, “Isn’t your birthday on Christmas?”

“It is never too cold for ice cream.”

\---

Armin didn’t understand why adding cayenne pepper to chocolate ice cream made it Mexican, but the place called the flavour Mexican Chocolate and even if she was a little wary of the name it sounded like a good mix of flavours and ended up being even more delicious than expected, especially with dark chocolate flakes on top. Mmmm, chocolate. She was sharing it with Levi, as that was the only way she would allow him to pay for hers (and she still wasn’t happy about it). Despite the spice, it actually wasn’t spicy at all; it just had a little bit of flavour-heat that mixed well with the sweetness of the sugar, the bitterness of the dark chocolate, and the mild, soothing qualities of the cream. Eren more or less inhaled his Strawberry Cake, which was cake batter ice cream with strawberry chunks and vanilla, and very delicious, and then they all headed back towards campus. Levi could have turned off at his own street, but they insisted the three of them spend more time together even if it was just dicking around by the pond on campus while the sun went down. 

Armin and Eren sat at the edge of the tiny boathouse boardwalk, more just a little floating platform held in place by wobbly ramps, with their pants rolled up and their legs in the water. “There don’t seem to be any fish in here,” Armin observed. 

“Leeches,” Levi said, and all feet left the water. “Only at the bottom. You’re fine.” 

Feet still did not return to the water. “Why are you standing?”

“The water’s gross. Always has been. There’s a freshwater… thing off the path in the woods, I’d swim there, but here I think I’ll stay out of the water.”

“At least sit next to us.”

Levi sat on Eren’s other side and leaned against him, trying to be nonchalant about it. Eren pulled him in closer, as he did Armin, and they all sort of melted into each other. Somewhere distant, a police siren sounded briefly; a brave duck sat on the top of the murky pond water; the sky turned over from blue to orange. Eren’s left hand played with Armin’s hair, and he rested his head against Levi’s, his bag of presents forgotten behind him, because this was the real present. 

“I love you,” Eren murmured. Armin responded with the same, and a kiss to Eren’s chin. Levi’s fingers dug into Eren’s thigh through his jeans. “Yeah, you too, Levi.”

“Love you too,” Levi forced out, head spinning. 

\---

The sun hadn’t set yet, not even close, but the temperature was dropping rapidly so they made their way toward Shiga House. Eren and Armin huddled close for warmth, Levi once again crossing his arms below his cape, not making eye contact, refusing all hugs. 

“Is this because I said I love you?” Eren asked. 

Levi grunted, but didn’t properly respond. 

“Well, I do. I love you. I’m not taking it back.” 

“It’s also because we’re on your campus. The campus where I am employed.” 

“Oh, come hug us. If anyone recognises you we’ll tell them it’s because it’s cold out and you put up a valiant fight.”

Levi gave up and gave in, fitting himself in between Eren and his bag of potential art. 

They emerged from the walkway between the campus centre and an adjacent house to see two police cars, one for Wall and one for the town, parked on the road next to Shiga. As they got closer, a large crowd of mostly students was gathered around in the grass. 

Levi broke off once he saw the police, he and Eren both eyeing them with the wariness of someone who’d been arrested before and didn’t hope to repeat the experience. Armin, too, watched them uncomfortably; she trusted the campus police, but wasn’t sure about the town’s. 

“Excuse me.” The campus officer stopped them before they could get to the front of the house. “Do you live here?”

“We do,” Eren said, indicating himself and Armin. 

“Room 309?” 

“Yes… Why do you ask?”

“That means we have the whole house accounted for. And who are you?” she asked of Levi. 

“Levi Ackerman. Visiting Professor.” 

“And your purpose here?” 

He sighed. “Am I being detained, officer?”

The officer sighed as well. “No, we haven’t detained anyone yet.” 

Mikasa came pushing through the crowd, with Sasha following. “Don’t come home tonight!” she shouted. “I called you, Armin! I left a message, didn’t you get it?”

“No.” Armin fished around in her coat pocket for her phone. “Oh. Four missed calls and a voicemail. Guess I didn’t notice.”

“What’s going on?” Eren asked of Mikasa, but the officer answered him. 

“There’s been some vandalism. Your room is the closest to it; the paint covers your window more than any other. It may be safe to assume the message was directed at one of you.” 

“What did it say?” 

“Don’t tell them!” Mikasa begged. 

The officer sighed again. “If you want to know, go see for yourself. We’re passing off the investigation to the town, and they’ll get on it tomorrow. I have to report back.” She left them, heading to her cruiser; two cops from the town waved her off and then left as well. 

Mikasa stayed put. “Don’t look. You don’t want to see it.”

“If it’s directed at us --” Armin began. 

“It is, and trust me when I say you don’t want to see it.”

“There’s going to be an investigation,” Levi said. “They should be prepared for that.”

Mikasa put her hands in her hair, clenched them into fists, then wiped her palms down her face. “I know,” she said, muffled behind her hands. “God, don’t I know that. But.”

“I’m going,” Armin said, and Eren nodded his agreement. They, followed by Levi, pushed in towards the crowd, many of whom went silent as they passed, until they were front-and-centre in front of the house, and then they looked up. 

“Oh, shit,” Levi whispered, the only one of them who could draw breath. Eren shut his eyes and grit his teeth on instinct, but then looked back at the words, which looked like blood in their dripping red spray paint. And Armin, after a long moment of silence, let out a sob before turning away from the words and into Eren’s embrace. 

They should have listened to Mikasa.


	36. The Cliff’s Edge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It hurts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a heavy, though short, chapter discussing violence enacted against trans people, specifically trans women.

“I have to go to class.” Levi didn’t dare say it any louder than a whisper, soft in Eren’s ear. The dark circles under Eren’s eyes matched Levi’s own, and contrasted with Armin’s red, puffy eyelids that persisted as she slept. 

“We’re skipping,” Eren mumbled. At some point in the night Armin had awoken, very briefly, to insist that she wouldn’t be returning to campus yet; Eren absolutely supported her decision. 

“I know. Get some sleep.” He knew Eren hadn’t gotten more than moments; neither had Levi. Armin only managed sleep because she’d exhausted herself before then. 

“I’ll try.” 

Levi leaned past Eren to press his lips to Armin’s forehead, lingering there for a moment. He pulled away, but not too far, fingers combing gently through her hair. This was just one of those things Levi would never be able to understand, but he hurt for her anyway. He left a kiss on Eren’s cheek as well. “Call me if you need anything.” 

“We’ll be okay,” Eren said, because he wanted to believe it. 

Levi found, as he walked to campus, that his old instincts of paranoia returned. He met everyone’s eyes with a glare, as if he would see the evidence of red paint sprayed across their faces. His students, he afforded even more suspicion, because it was on their campus that this disgusting insult appeared; no hands had any residue of paint besides that which they used for his class, but he didn’t let down his guard, and he was certain they noticed he was on edge. 

He hated it. He hated how unprofessional it made him -- not that he thought of himself as professional, but he did expect to be taken seriously and how would anyone ever take him seriously if he showed vulnerability in a position of authority? He already put himself in enough danger -- danger? -- by being vulnerable to his equals; Armin in particular could bring him to ruin with what she knew. But she wouldn’t. Nor would Eren; he certainly knew enough, even if he hadn’t been privy to Levi’s scattered life story. 

Others would. Others took advantage of their fellow people, took advantage of their insecurities to bring them down and to force more against them. 

Levi approached a pair of students, muting the display on their projector to properly view their co-operative progress. He gave his students the option to use projection, or not, as they wished; while he didn’t bother with it, finding the light more a distraction than an aid, he knew many artists in his genre who used such methods -- projecting on a canvas, painting the projection, and then removing all the focal blur. He offered the students some input, then left them to work again, and left himself to his churning thoughts as he once again paced the room. 

Back at Levi’s apartment, Armin slept on in Eren’s arms. She dreamed vividly of running, being chased without a glimpse of her pursuer. But she slept soundly, her face betraying none of her dream self’s fear. 

Eren fell asleep eventually, and awoke to the sound of the air vents turning on. He assumed Levi was home, and had set the air circulating so he could paint. The bedroom vents were shuttered as always, so Eren went back to sleep. 

\---

Dinner was a muted affair, nearly silent in Levi’s kitchen. He brought home Chinese, taking extra care to actually procure a decent variety of food groups and hopefully give his partners enough energy to do something other than sleep, but from his own understanding of the human psyche and acute depression (or whatever term one wanted to use to describe this reaction) he knew it was unlikely. Armin was afraid, and had every right to be. Eren was afraid for her, and had every right to be. Levi was afraid for both of them, and had every right to be; perhaps the only reason Levi managed to be up and about today was that he was used to it, and executive dysfunction had luckily never been among his personal annoyances. At least they were eating, he thought. 

“Are you going to class tomorrow?” Levi asked. 

“No,” Armin answered. 

“Understandable.” Very understandable, as the graffiti was still plastered across their window, covered by a plastic sheet to hide it from passers-by but surely visible from inside the room. It would be impossible to sleep with such a threat looming over their heads, and impossible to pay attention in class if she was looking over her shoulder every few moments. 

Levi was somewhat surprised no-one had come looking for them in regards to the investigation, which he knew from student rumours (and Mikasa) was running on painfully little information, despite that the vandalism must have occurred in broad daylight. According to Mikasa, she hadn’t seen the words when she left for the mall Sunday morning, nor when she returned from practice. But when she met Sasha outside the house minutes into dinner, a crowd had gathered to gawk at the threat, the slur, the blood-red paint. 

She and Sasha had slept in shifts that night, door open, a baseball bat just out of sight but within reach, watching across the hall to see if anyone tried to follow through on the threat; no-one came. They planned to continue the watch as long as necessary. 

Levi had done something similar, and he supposed Eren did the same; they both lay wide awake all night, listening for any sound, after Armin cried herself to sleep in her terror. Not that anyone should know she was there, but one couldn’t be too careful in a situation like this. 

Armin felt helpless. It was not a feeling she enjoyed, but it was a feeling she often found herself experiencing. Now it was accompanied by the kind of fear she’d felt when accosted by playground bullies. Some part of her wished she could say it was magnified times a thousand, but really, she knew that back then it had been the worst fear she’d ever experienced. Until her parents’ deaths, she’d thought she was invincible, and that people lived forever. It was fantastical, perhaps, but common to children. So fear of hurtful words and a foot stuck out to trip her were once terrors on the level of her current fear for her life. 

“Most death threats aren’t followed through,” one part of her thought, and another responded with, “That’s probably bullshit, and doubly so if you’re a trans woman.” The threat was very real. She considered herself lucky she even got a threat at all, instead of just a gun to her head, no warning. And lucky she’d made it this long; she knew the average lifespan of a transgender person in the U.S. was between twenty and thirty years, so there had to be plenty who died much younger. Armin was only eighteen, but in a way she was an old woman, or at least middle-aged. 

She deserved better. Even if she wasn’t a good person -- she tried to be, but even if she _wasn’t_ , she was still human. She still deserved respect. She still deserved not to get “drop dead, shemale” spray painted across her bedroom window. 

Her stomach rolled. With a grimace, she put her fork down. 

“Eat more,” Levi said. 

“Can’t. Feel sick.”

“Please, Armin,” Eren tried, but she just shook her head. 

“I’m going back to bed.”

Sleeping helped her avoid it. Sleeping let Armin believe it was all a nightmare and she’d wake up soon enough, dozing leaned up next to Eren at the boathouse by the pond, Levi on his other side freaking out that Eren was in love with him. That golden moment before cold fear settled into her bones like it belonged there. 

\---

“En garde. Prȇts. Allez.”

Step-step- _fwap_. 

“One-zero. Allez.”

Step-step- _fwap_. 

“Two-zero. Allez.”

Step-step- _fwap_. 

“Three-zero. Allez.”

Step-step- _clang_ -step- _thunk_.

“Ow!”

“Four-zero; Mikasa, don’t injure your teammates.”

“Mm.”

“En garde. Prȇts. Allez.”

Step-step- _fwap_. 

“Five-zero. Bout to Mikasa.”

Remove mask. Shake hands. 

“Break.”

One of the co-captains took Mikasa aside during the water break. “Ackerman.”

“What?” she snapped. That the captain didn’t flinch was a commendable feat; Mikasa still had her sabre in hand and though it was neither sharp on any edge nor pointed at the end, she could still do a lot of damage with it. Her recent opponent was rubbing a bruise forming on his forehead; his mask had somehow not been enough to fully shield him from the force of her attack. 

“Calm the fuck down,” the captain said. “You’re within regulations, technically, but a lot of refs would card you for that fourth point.”

“I know.”

“If you need to sit out, do it. I know you’re stressed as hell. If someone threatened my friend like that--” 

“You don’t know _shit_!” Mikasa gritted her teeth. She tilted her sabre up without thinking. 

The captain just glared, then yanked the weapon out of Mikasa’s hand. “You’re out of control tonight, and I’m not putting up with it. Get out. You can come back when you’re not taking out your anger on your teammates.” 

“Fine,” she spat. Mikasa had half a mind to just throw her equipment across the room and storm out, but then she’d probably be kicked off the team for good. So she carefully put the sabre, mask, lamé, glove, chest plate, and cords back in their respective storage. She thought for a moment that maybe she should at least watch the others practice, but then in frustration decided against it. Instead she headed home. 

Sasha was already there; archery ended an hour earlier than fencing, so of course she would be. Mikasa dropped down next to her on the bed. 

“Annie, Connie, and Reiner didn’t see anyone,” Sasha reported. They’d enlisted their friends to keep watch on Eren and Armin’s room during the times neither of them could be there. The only space of time that no-one had a break was while all of them were at Anatomy for the Artist -- but Mikasa skipped and remained at her post. 

“You don’t have to do this,” she wanted to say, to all of them. “I can take care of Armin and Eren. I can protect them on my own. I always have.” But Mikasa knew that they wanted to help, would continue to help even if Mikasa really could stay awake and skip all her classes until the culprit was found. They cared about Armin, too. So instead, she just said, “Thanks,” and leaned against her friend. 

“Shouldn’t you be at--?”

“They kicked me out. I’m too angry.” Mikasa sighed. “Just… let me sit here.”

“Okay.”

\---

When Armin woke next, Eren and Levi were still asleep. With some effort, she extracted herself from their embraces and padded into the kitchen. 

Cold, leftover Chinese takeout cartons sat front-and-centre in the fridge; she didn’t bother to reheat it, just took out a fork and ate. She wasn’t even hungry, not really, but she was wide awake and she had to do something to remind herself that she was still alive. 

She felt dead. It was as if the threat had sucked the life from her, leaving her to sit on the cold cement floor of the front room and stare awkwardly up at the painting of Eren, half-finished; cold lo mein squished between her teeth. Her head throbbed. 

She was missing classes, she was hiding away, she was barely eating, she was barely awake. She hadn’t showered since Sunday morning and it didn’t seem like she was going to any time soon. Despite the aches in her body, Armin felt like a ghost, as if the threat had been enough to kill her. 

The bedroom door opened, and Levi came out. “There you are.”

“Did I wake you?” Armin asked, in a flat voice. 

“No, this is when I usually wake up. Eren’s still asleep.” He sat down next to Armin. “What are you thinking about?”

“Death.” 

Levi tensed. 

“I feel dead.” She put down the empty take-out carton. “I feel empty and cold and dead. And I’m so scared of dying that I’m throwing away my life. I might as well--”

“ _No._ ” Levi reached out and pulled Armin close. “No. You do not ‘might as well’. No.”

“What?” 

This wasn’t a normal Levi hug. This wasn’t a silent cry for contact that he would never honestly admit he needed. Levi held her with such strength that he ended up pulling her into his lap. 

“Don’t you know how many people care about you?” Levi said. “How many people at Wall are doing whatever they can to protect you, and find who it is that wants to hurt you? Mikasa set up a fucking watch rotation to see if anyone comes by your room, and when they’re not guarding your room with a bat, they’re all over the place to see if anyone says anything against you. I’ve -- god -- I’ve more or less threatened all the professors I know into doing the same, listening for your name just in case. _Your_ professors have all e-mailed you, which you might have missed; they’re willing to extend your semester indefinitely if you need to go on leave. People you don’t even know got a fucking Twitter thing trending for you. 

“And, even if you don’t care about any of that, _you_ have so much left in your life. Just because some piece of shit wrote on your window doesn’t mean you have to let them take that from you.” Levi relaxed his arms, which he just realised had tightened around Armin possibly enough to hurt. “You have every right to be afraid. I understand why you feel empty. But you are _not_ better off dead.”

Armin didn’t say anything at first, too shocked at Levi’s blatant display of emotion, his words, how much he cared, how much he knew about what was going on at Wall without her knowledge. “...Are you crying?” she eventually asked, feeling Levi’s shallow, shuddering breaths shake her. 

“No.” Levi honestly did not believe he was crying, didn’t even know there was any moisture on his face until Armin reached up and wiped a single, lonely tear from his cheek. “Oh.”

“Wow. I didn’t know I meant that much to you.” 

“You--” Levi’s arms tightened again. “Of course you do. Do you think I could tell you as much as I have about myself, and let you pick apart all my idiosyncrasies, and not care about you after all that?” 

Armin laughed. It wasn’t a real laugh, nor a happy one; it was more a hard exhalation than anything else, and the expression on her face was still morose. Any other day, that admission might have made her happy. “I guess… I didn’t expect you to show it.” 

“Well, maybe I’ve learned a thing or two recently. Maybe it doesn’t make any sense, and I haven’t known you for very long, but I do care, and I want you to know that. And I know you deserve so much more than how you’re feeling right now.” 

She sighed. “I do.” After a long silence, she said, “I should go back.”

“To bed?”

“No. To school. I should show them I’m not afraid of them.”

“But you are afraid.”

“They don’t need to know that.”

“Armin… There’s a time and place for bravery.” Which was perhaps a little hypocritical; Levi made bad decisions that could hurt him out of a kind of fucked-up sense of bravery all the time. So he didn’t really want to discourage her, but he also didn’t want to lose her. Levi sort of understood now why Erwin and Hanji had been so worried about his more risky life decisions; it wasn’t that they didn’t approve, it was that they knew how dangerous it could be. 

“You think they’re really doing to do anything?” Armin said. Even as she said that, she knew how unreasonable it sounded. “I mean, sure, they’ll try,” she amended, “if they’re really clueless -- but if I really do have the support of all my friends and all my professors and enough of the student body to trend on Twitter, they won’t get far.”

“They’ll find a chance. They’ll make one if they have to.” 

Armin said nothing, thinking it over. There was fear in her eyes, but also a determination that made Levi afraid for her, more than he already was. 

“Is this some self-destructive instinct? I just told you, we care about you. You don’t need to throw yourself to the wolves.” 

“What would you do?” Armin asked. She already knew the answer. 

And she was right, and Levi knew it, so he didn’t have to say that he would go right back into the lion’s den without a second thought -- he’d stare said lion in the face if he knew who it was. “Give it another day, at least.”

She shrugged, even as her body shook in fear. “Sure. Maybe that will be a strategic move, creating a little more tension. Biblical, even; I’ll return on the third day.” 

“You don’t have to do this.” 

“But I can’t just keep running away, and relying on other people to protect me. I ran when Professor Verman wouldn’t accept me as a woman. I ran when I wasn’t sure how my grandpa would react. I ran when I was a kid, and got bullied for reading. I ran from my friends when my parents died. I ran from Eren when I fell in love with him and I ran from my feelings for you, too. I run from everything. I’ve done it for so long, because I thought I was weak. And maybe I am weak. But I can do something for myself.” She deflated a little, leaning more fully against Levi, as if she lost some steam. “Well, I guess I’ll see how I feel about it when the time comes.”

“Alright.” That was the most he could ask for. Reconsideration in a different mindset. “Just know, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want. If you do go back to classes, you can still sleep here. No-one will have to know.”

“Thanks. I probably will, if they haven’t cleaned our window yet.” 

“You’re really going to go, aren’t you.”

“Probably.”

“Just… keep someone with you, okay?”

“I’ll try.”

“Armin.”

“I’ll _try_ , Levi. I can’t promise people will be falling over themselves wanting to be my bodyguards.”

“Then call me. I’ll do it when no-one else can.”

“I can’t do that. You have a job, you have --” she gestured at the painting before them “-- that.”

“I don’t care. You’re more important.” 

“Really?” she said, like she didn’t believe him. And she didn’t. “More important than your life’s work? You’ve been building up your art career for longer than I’ve been alive, Levi. Putting your Stohess exhibition aside for me would ruin it.”

“To hell with Stohess. You’re important to me. I’m not letting you get hurt.” Levi flung an arm out at the room full of paintings, shadowed in the dark of pre-sunrise morning. “This all means a lot to me, yeah, but paintings aren’t people. I’d do the same for Eren, or for any of my friends. If someone threatens your lives -- fuck my paintings! I’d burn them all if that’s what it took to protect the people I care about.”

The bedroom door opened, and Eren came out. “What’s with all the yelling?” he asked. 

“Armin wants to go back to Wall,” Levi answered. 

“And Levi’s going to throw his whole life away to be my bodyguard,” Armin added. 

“You’re the one throwing your life away! Someone wants you dead --”

“Most of the world wants me dead on principle. I can’t very well go hide in a hole, can I?”

“You can do _something_ to protect yourself!”

“HEY!” Eren shouted. When his partners quieted, he sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of them. “You’re the first people I’ve ever seen fight wrapped up so close in each other.”

They were, in fact, still cuddling. 

“And the fight you’re having is about a half-step from who-likes-who-more.”

Armin turned red; Levi looked away. Eren didn’t even bother to tease them about it; it was too easy. 

“You’re both right, and I’m sure you know that, which probably makes this all harder,” Eren continued. “If Armin wants to go back to Wall, that’s her choice; but yeah, you should make sure you’re safe first. I don’t want to lose you any more than Levi does, but it’s not just selfish; you deserve to keep living. This threat can’t be the end of you.” Eren’s eyes were glassy; he ignored it. She knew as well as he did the fear of losing yet another person who was so important to them. “And Levi throwing away his life’s work is not only enormously irresponsible, but also unnecessary. We can handle it. If we need your help, we’ll ask for it; you have free time and we’ll make use of that, but you don’t need to leave your classes or your painting.” 

“It’s way too early for you to be so clear-headed,” Levi grumbled. Even if he woke before dawn every day, he still only gained his full mental faculties around nine or ten. Same with Armin, in fact, though she rarely woke so early. Which probably said a lot about why they were fighting like this. 

“Yeah, I’ll probably be loopy later today as a result. So thanks for that.” Eren yawned. “Can we go cuddle in bed, instead of here? The floor can’t be comfortable.”

“I was going to work out,” Levi said, but two pairs of eyes turned on him; Eren’s wet with unshed tears and Armin’s puffy from long-past ones. “Fine,” he said, as if it was in any way begrudging. He ended up carrying Armin back into the bedroom, because she stumbled when she stood up. 

It was only after Eren and Armin were fast asleep, and Levi himself had nearly fallen back into it, that he remembered the empty takeout carton on his kitchen floor. Oh well; he’d deal with it after the sun came up.


	37. Numbers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Gospel according to Mikasa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: blasphemy? and brief OCs.

The sun came up. 

Armin shifted as soon as the sunlight streaming in through Levi’s bedroom window hit her eyelids; she yawned and stretched half-consciously, pushing her boyfriends away from her slightly and waking them. Eren latched right back on to her, still mostly asleep, wrapping his arms around her like an octopus or a constrictor snake or some other very huggy noodley animal. Levi briefly considered getting up, but then he remembered his class was in the afternoon, so he turned his face back into the pillow and pulled the blankets up over his head. 

Eventually he did get up, though, hard as it was to leave Armin and Eren. 

Levi never did get in his morning workout, so he was just a bit crabbier than usual when he did finally get out of bed, but an extra coffee and a very shiny red apple managed to get him back to his usual state of unpleasantness. By the time his scowl had faded into a neutral, if dour, expression, Armin managed to drag Eren out of bed. 

“Aren’t you waiting until tomorrow to go back?” Levi asked. 

“Yeah, but I want to get up,” she said. “I’ll feel better if I do something. I slept for almost a whole day.” Armin led Eren to the kitchen table. 

“You needed it,” Levi said. “Maybe use today to make some plans about what you’ll do when you do go back.” 

“Sure.”

Levi left. Armin reheated the rest of the leftovers for herself and the boyfriend still sprawled half-asleep over the kitchen table. 

“Thanks,” Eren said, then attempted to eat without lifting his head. He really was a little loopy from the Early Morning Logic. “Is Levi ignoring me?” he asked. 

“I didn’t think he was. Why do you say that?”

Eren shrugged. “I guess it’s kind of nothing. I mean, I was thinking he’s paying less attention to me, but that’s probably because we’re both paying so much attention to you, and you need it.”

“Hm.” She ignored the part about her needing attention -- it was true, after all -- and chewed while she thought on the rest. “Maybe it’s because you told him you love him? He is kind of… well, you know. Weird with emotions.”

Eren smiled. “I did say that, didn’t I? Wow. That feels like a year ago.”

“A lot happened.” 

Eren reached across the table for Armin’s hand, and she gladly accepted the touch. 

“Maybe, when he gets back, you should talk about it with him. You two haven’t had a lot of time alone recently.”

“Hm. I will.” He stared at Armin. “I love you.”

“Making sure I don’t feel left out?”

“No. Well, yes, but I do love you.”

“I know you do. I love you too.”

\---

 _i’m coming back tomorrow. can i enlist your army for a little protection?_

Mikasa didn’t know how to feel about that text message. She knew -- she’d felt it -- that Armin had come to some decision the night before, or early in the morning, or whatever it was when the sun wasn’t up yet and you hadn’t slept but it was long past midnight. But she hadn’t known or even imagined it would be _this_. 

Realistically, she knew she couldn’t make Armin’s decisions for her. Armin was her own person; Armin was an adult and knew what was best for herself. Usually. That didn’t mean Mikasa had to like Armin’s decisions, or agree with them, or even agree with the idea that Armin had made said decisions in her own best interest. 

She didn’t think this was in Armin’s best interest. Mikasa thought it was an enormous risk with the possible consequences being incredibly high. It was the kind of thing even Mikasa would probably hold back on, and she was pretty decently well known for being brave and unflappable. Mikasa knew Armin was brave, but that Armin wanted to come back only proved she was braver -- or more clueless -- than Mikasa expected. 

At the same time, well, even if she was clueless, she was still brave, and the decision to return showed it. It would have to make those who would threaten her think twice about messing with her. And she was clear-headed enough to ask for protection. Armin knew what the risks were, but she wasn’t letting her fear of those risks control her -- she was lucky she had that choice. 

_yes_ , Mikasa texted back. It wasn’t really _her army_ ; first of all, it was more guard than army, and sure, the group reported to her, and she’d organised some of them, but she also reported -- well, it didn’t matter. She knew Eren, and likely Levi as well, had already tried to reason with her, and Armin had her heart set on returning, and the guard would want to protect her even more with her there in the flesh. But Mikasa had to push a little. _why tomorrow? i’d suggest you wait a little longer, but if you really want to…_

_it was either 3 days or 40 and i’d miss finals._

Oh. Biblical. Well, if she was going to be like that… _i’ll make sure you have a guard of 12 then._

_thanks mika._

Mikasa rolled her eyes. She didn’t hate the nickname, but it was too cutesy for her tastes; still, she let Armin get away with it this time. 

The din of pre-rehearsal chatter died down as the time neared seven p.m. Krista emerged from the wings; a few minutes later, Ymir climbed down from the catwalks where she’d been angling lights with the crew. There were three days until the start of Hell Week; Mikasa looked at the elaborate set before her, and the cast dressed in full costume and makeup for their last scheduled run-through before cast-from-a-hat began, and realised, not for the first time, that Rocky Horror should really never need anything so glamorous. 

Before going on stage herself, Mikasa checked the other messages on her phone; Connie and Hitch checking in from Mikasa’s room, and Bertholdt checking out. Her phone then went into the little pocket sewn into the front of her corset. 

“Armin’s coming back,” she whispered to Sasha. “Tomorrow. She wants our help.”

“Just us, or everyone?”

“Everyone. I think Levi told her about our watch rotation.” 

“Oh.” Sasha fidgeted a little. “Don’t you think it’s a little soon?”

“‘Course I do. But I also know I can’t stop her. Eren and I are known for being stubborn and headstrong, but it’s really Armin that’s like that. You can calm us down and redirect us -- it’s not easy, but you can -- but once Armin gets going… well, I hope she never meets an immovable object.” 

\---

“I love you,” Eren said. 

He was waiting on the couch when Levi got home, laying down and hidden by the back. Levi’s surprise passed quickly; he hung up his cape-coat-thing in the front closet and then came around the couch, staring down at Eren.

Eren smiled up at him. The stress of the past few days still showed in his eyes. Levi climbed on top of him on the couch, tangling their legs together, and propped himself up on his elbows so he could put his hands on Eren’s cheeks. He thumbed gently over the bags under Eren’s eyes and then kissed him. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Eren mumbled when Levi pulled back to switch angles. 

“No.” Another kiss. “If we do I’ll end up fucking you.”

“Hm?” 

“It’s not a good time.” 

“That’s, uh, that’s true. But I thought you didn’t want to.”

Levi put off any more kissing in favour of tucking his head against Eren’s neck. “When you said it, said you l-loved me --” Levi cursed his tongue for the stutter. “-- I figured out what I was waiting for.” 

There was a pause, in which the gears in Eren’s brain very slowly and methodically crunched over what Levi had just admitted. “You were waiting for me to fall in love with you?”

“It’s completely unlike me, I know.” 

Eren wanted to disagree, because he had a weird feeling Levi was trying to reject the idea that he could ever have anything to do with love. He understood, though, why Levi said it. Still, it wasn’t unlike Levi -- it was just unlike what Levi wanted himself to be. “I think the person you think you are, and the person you want everyone else to see you as, is pretty different from who you actually are. If this is something you felt, then it is like you. It’s just… maybe not what you’re used to being.” 

Levi mumbled something Eren didn’t quite understand. 

“What?”

“Nothing. You sound like a show I’ve seen.”

“Was it an anime?” 

“God fucking damn it.” It was, and Levi dug his fingers into Eren’s sides, tickling him in retaliation. 

“Levi -- aah! Ahaha!” Eren squirmed, shrieked, laughed his way through Levi’s tickling fingers skimming up his sides. He pushed ineffectually at his hands, tried to free himself from the torment; Levi didn’t budge; he just tickled harder, with a grin on his face that Eren, with his eyes shut tight in laughter, couldn’t see. 

Armin peeked out of Levi’s bedroom to watch them; from where she was behind the couch, she couldn’t see Eren, but she saw Levi’s smile and heard Eren’s loud laughter and thought, _Yeah, this is good._

\---

”I love you,” Eren said. 

The sun was slowly sinking into the tree line, the murky water of the pond glossed over in a brilliant glow, and Armin huddled in close to Eren to hold off the chill slowly seeping into her bones. Eren’s fingers continued to scritch gently at her scalp and it felt wonderful. 

“I love you,” Armin repeated. Though she was reluctant to dislodge Eren’s hand, she turned her head to kiss him on the chin. 

It had been such a wonderful day. Sure, it wasn’t anything extravagant, just a little day in town for Eren’s birthday, but it was heartwarming to spend a whole day with people she cared about; going places was the background to being in one another’s company. She shifted her gaze to Levi, wondering if Eren’s words were for both of them; Levi tried not to show it, but he was wondering the same. His left hand, resting on Eren’s thigh, began to squeeze until his knuckles turned white. 

“Yeah, you too, Levi,” Eren confirmed. 

Armin just barely caught the flare of Levi’s nostrils as he gasped in the tiniest surprised breath. “Love you too,” he mumbled in return. 

That was the thought that gave her the strength to exit Levi’s house on Wednesday morning. She wore Levi’s pants -- a little short and a little loose around the thighs, and mysteriously black -- and Eren’s shirt -- a little long in the sleeves, a lot wide in the shoulders -- under her coat and though cold air hit her face she felt warm in that memory. Eren’s hand was in hers; Levi’s hands were jammed into his cape pockets as soon as College Hall came into view, but he stayed close. 

The atrium of the art building, with its many glass walls and its very large high-mounted semi-abstract multi-canvas painting, was bustling full of students trying to get to class. No-one noticed the nervous girl and her nervous boyfriends, all a little too short to quite attempt vigilance over the heads around them but trying hard anyway. 

They parted ways at the staircase; Levi’s class was on the second floor, while Armin and Eren had their lecture in the basement. “Stay safe,” were Levi’s parting words, and he looked away and walked off briskly before his nerves could turn him right back around. 

If Professor Shadis was surprised to see Armin back in the seats of his lecture hall, he didn’t show it; he only nodded at her and Eren as they passed by his lectern. Mikasa was already in her seat, but she stood as soon as she saw Armin, and took her free hand as soon as she was close enough. Then she pulled her two best friends into a hug right there between the rows. 

“God, you two…” Mikasa began. 

“I know,” Armin said. She couldn’t put into words what Mikasa’s sentiment was, and she was pretty sure Mikasa couldn’t either, but she understood it anyway. “Thank you.” 

“Thank you,” Eren repeated. Thank you for everything you’ve done, he meant; thank you for protecting my best friend better than anything I could have ever come up with, even while we were away. 

“Don’t thank me. It wasn’t even… I didn’t do anything beyond the least I could have done.” 

“Thank you anyway,” Armin insisted. 

“It-- it was nothing. No problem.” The millennial version of _you’re welcome_ ; she accepted the thanks even if she didn’t think she really deserved it. 

They sat; hands stayed clasped under the table until they needed to write. 

It wasn’t until the class nearly ended that Armin realised the group surrounding her. Eren on one side, Mikasa on the other with Sasha to her left. In front of the four of them were Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie; behind, Connie; and a little farther back even Jean took up a sort of lookout duty, watching the door and the other students in-between taking notes. 

“Is this everyone?” Armin whispered to Mikasa while someone else answered a question posed by the professor. 

Mikasa looked around at them, to the group at which Armin gestured. “Almost. Krista and Ymir have been doing a lot, even though they don’t know you that well. And there was someone -- Hitch, I didn’t really know her aside from when she modelled for us but she said she wanted to help.” She smiled gently while she re-counted in her head. “Plus Levi, that makes twelve of us.”

Armin bit back a grin. “So you got it, then?”

“It’s not like ‘three days’ is a particularly obscure reference.”

It was a good thing that Armin picked that particular day to come back; after Anatomy for the Artist she was drained from nerves, but luckily that was her only Wednesday class. She thought she should probably do some homework, but a check of her email revealed her European and African history professors had allowed her to drop the essays for that week, provided she came in for office hours when she felt like returning. She decided to deal with that the next morning when she went back to class, because she was tired and had a work shift during dinner later in the day. Eren had miraculously thought to request substitutes for both of them on Monday, but today was a different story and she would show up there like everywhere else she had to be. In the meantime, she took a nap in Levi’s office on the couch he’d recently dragged in. 

Or… she tried to, anyway. She couldn’t seem to find a comfortable position, even on the evenly soft couch, and she ended up staring at Levi, who was, surprise of all surprises, reading. 

“What?” Levi asked when he noticed her staring. 

“Mmmm…” she hummed in that three-tone way that translates to _I don’t know_. “You’re pretty?”

Levi’s eyes scattered to the side. 

Armin chuckled. “So, how’s it feel to know he loves you?” 

“Really fucking good,” Levi said in a rush. 

“Does he know that?” 

“Yeah. We talked. We-- I--” He stammered and then ran a hand through his hair to collect himself. “I think that’s what I was waiting for.” 

“You mean…?” 

“Yeah. With the… yeah.” Levi looked to the wall separating his office from Eren’s advisor’s next to him; Hannes wasn’t in, but he was still paranoid enough to not spell it out. “I just… I want him again. Completely. There’s not even a question about it anymore.”

“What about me?” 

Levi sucked in a deep breath while he thought it over. He’d never felt so fluttery in his life, but thinking about the fact that someone _loved_ him just caused some explosion of butterflies in every organ within his ribcage. But then there was Armin, who didn’t love him, and Levi didn’t love her either, but he did care and so did she and that was overwhelming and confusing so -- “I don’t know.” 

“Don’t worry; I’ll let you know if I fall in love with you.” It was only about half-way a joke. 

“I think it has to go both ways. Not that I don’t think it would, but I…” He stopped that thought before he could finish it in some ill-thought-out way, and saved it for later. “But this is new to me. I don’t really have a lot to go off of.” 

“You really haven’t ever been in love before, have you?”

“No. You know that.” 

“I do, it’s just…” Armin’s brows drew together. “It’s hard to believe.”

“Why? Were you in love before Eren?”

“No. But… You’re older than me, and you’ve had a lot more relationships…”

“And I didn’t care about them. I liked them; I fucked them. I didn’t love them.” He folded down the corner of his page and set his book aside. “What’s so hard to believe about it?”

“I guess it’s just kind of strange that Eren is your first. I mean, if you’re going to fall in love, you’d think the first time would be earlier.” 

Levi stared for a while, trying to let that sink in. “That wasn’t any of the things I expected you to say.”

“What did you expect?”

“That my first love should be my own age, that love is universal and I have to have felt it by now, that Eren is so unlike me…” He shook his head. “I mean I… I haven’t loved anyone, but I did care about someone once. But that’s different. And you know how that ended.” 

Armin wasn’t sure what he meant at first, but then she remembered -- it was one of his stories, one of those that he’d been more reluctant to tell. “You cared about him?”

“Of course I did. I didn’t love him, but I cared. He did too. That’s why it hurt so much.” But Levi _wanted_ to fuck him, even though he knew the man well enough to care but not well enough to love him… It didn’t make sense. He thought it had to be love or nothing at all. 

“Well at least now you’re admitting it hurt.”

Levi didn’t respond to that. 

“Are you going to tell Eren about him?”

Levi welcomed the redirection from what was about to be a long over-analysis of his own emotions and how they worked. “Yes. I will before I sleep with him. But not now. A lot is going on, and I can wait a little longer.” 

\---

Mikasa thought about the last two days; about the flurry of text messages between her and what she thought of as Armin’s guard. Annie, Sasha, and Connie had taken turns accompanying Armin to her Thursday classes; a number of the messages were vaguely related to how cute Armin looked when she was flustered about her friends following her around -- she thought those messages would be of better use to Eren, who would no doubt have a very involved response. 

Sasha and Annie sat on one of the prop beds on stage, just beyond the wings. They were cross-legged, facing each other, talking; Sasha’s cheeks were darkened, probably because she’d just found out the awkward way that Annie didn’t believe in underwear. 

Mikasa caught snippets of conversation as she crossed the stage; more and more of the cast were watching Ymir and Krista go over their notes from the last rehearsal, but they still kept up talking as long as they could because once they stopped, rehearsal would start, even if it wasn’t time yet.

After checking her range of motion as she did every time she got laced into her corset, stretching as much as she could, Mikasa joined Sasha and Annie on the bed. Rather than sit, however, she flopped down face-first between them. 

“Taking a nap?” Annie teased. 

Mikasa groaned. If she could nap, she would; she hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep since Saturday. She felt a hand on her head, and melted into the bed when that hand started stroking her hair. 

Sasha started singing. “Soft ‘Kasa, warm ‘Kasa, little ball of fur…”

A loud bang and a shout startled them from the incredibly brief relaxation period. “What was that?” Mikasa gasped as she pushed herself off the bed and into a seated position. Annie was already on her feet, phone to her ear as more shouting began. 

Mikasa looked around for the source, and saw Jean with a bruise forming under his eye, pinning someone to the floor and, for some reason, trying to yank off his shoe. Jean just barely got the shoe off, and held it aloft above his head, when two more people descended on him, trying to pull him off of the student struggling to throw him off. 

She squinted to try and see who they were, and once she saw a punch thrown she got down off the bed as well and raced over. 

As it turned out, two of the cast -- Alan, who had been on the ground, and Helen -- as well as one of the crew -- Chris -- were all trying with methods of varying levels of violence and desperation to get that shoe out of Jean’s hands. He caught Mikasa’s eye, and threw the shoe towards her; once she caught it, Helen yanked Jean’s head back by his hair. 

Mikasa barely got a look at the paint splattered over the shoe before she made another throw back towards Sasha. 

Annie finally reached the fight and grabbed Helen’s wrist, squeezing until she let go. Then she twisted Helen’s arm behind her back, and used their height difference to tip Helen over and bring her down to her knees. Mikasa reached next and pulled Chris off of Jean’s back. He was big, and she was heavy with muscle but not enough to make up for their difference in size, so she didn’t bother trying to hold him down like she normally would. Instead she blocked his punches (which hurt a _lot_ ; she suspected he had some sort of training) until Reiner, once again a pillar of stability in a corset, skirt, and heels, restrained him as the only one heavy enough to do so. 

Jean was still grappling with Alan, who, though tiny and experiencing the disadvantage of Jean holding him off the ground with arms around his middle, was putting up a valiant fight consisting mostly of kicking, screaming, and scratching at whatever he could reach of Jean’s exposed back and shoulders. 

The fight had only gone on for about a minute when an officer of Campus Police rushed in, having luckily been driving around just outside the building when Annie called. She saw Helen on the ground, Annie’s knee in her back, spitting insults; Chris with his arms restrained by Reiner, who had him an inch off the ground without even noticing it; and Alan, still screaming in Jean’s hold, one shoe missing, his legs and arms held in place by Mikasa and Ymir, with several more members of the cast and crew standing nearby in case they needed to jump in. 

“What the hell is happening?” 

“I’m the one who called,” Annie shouted across the stage. “I’ll explain.”

\---

_we caught them._

Armin received this message partway through dinner -- pizza, because pizza is delicious, and the deliciousness of pizza is stronger than Levi’s desire to provide his partners with Slightly Fancier Food Than That. 

Another followed: _the wastes of oxygen who threatened you._

She dropped her half-eaten pizza slice (it landed, thankfully, on her plate) and stood half out of her chair. “Aaaaaaaah!” was all she was able to come up with as a response. 

_there were three. one of them was enough of a fool to some to practice with red paint on his shoe._

“What’s wrong?” Eren got up, reached for Armin to try and calm her down. 

“They got them!” She showed him the text messages. 

“Wha-- Oh! That’s great!”

She sighed as if the weight of the world had just left her back. “I can stop looking over my shoulder every five seconds.”

“Not exactly,” Levi said, after reading the message as well. “I mean I don’t want to piss on your parade, but there could be retaliation. Especially if they get convicted. I mean, they’re being charged with vandalism and intent to kill, if the cops here are worth their badges. Even just a charge might be enough to get their friends on your ass.”

_you should have seen it. krista took down alan when he squirmed out of the cop’s hands. it was beautiful._

Armin laughed. “Okay, then we’ll keep being careful. But I’m still calling this a victory.” She did a little leap around the corner of the table and ran into Eren, hugging him with all her might. 

Levi still thought it was too good to be true; though Eren hugged Armin back and said nothing, he gave Levi a look that seemed to say he was just as suspicious. 

_we’ll still have to be careful. they have friends, assholes always seem to. but at least we got them._

_who were they?_ Armin asked. 

_chris helen alan_

“Oh. They’re all from the Rocky Horror cast. Or… two of them are, I think, and one from the crew.”

“ _Oh_.”

“Hell week starts tomorrow. We… might have a bigger problem than I thought.” 

The phone rang, with a call from Mikasa. Armin put it on speakerphone. 

“Mikasa?”

_“Armin. Oh my god. The cops just left.”_

“What happened?”

_“Chris basically confessed to them as soon as they came in and then the other two did and, god, Annie knows the officers who came from something that happened in her first year. Cops are cops and the judicial system still sucks but they might actually get something done. At the very least, Wall admin said they’d expel or fire whoever ended up actually being the vandal. Even if they don’t actually go to jail, they still admitted to it.”_

“That’s great. I… I think?”

_“Probably. We just found out the campus police have been on heightened security alert the past few days, mostly around Shiga, and they’re going to stay like that for a little while longer just to make sure there’s no retaliation.”_

“Oh.”

_“We’re still going to protect you.”_

“Thank you. What happened before the cops came?” 

As Mikasa explained it, Jean had been the one to notice the paint on Alan’s shoes, and ended up wrestling him to the ground when he realised the connection. (“Really? Jean?” _“He’s gonna talk to you two when you get back.”_ ) And then the other two came in, and tried to fight Jean. Annie called the campus police almost immediately; apparently she’d been watching them and got it as soon as Jean did. Then she helped hold back Helen, while Mikasa and then Reiner got Chris. Cam-Po got there within a minute; the town police were there a few minutes later, as the campus dispatcher had passed it on to them too. 

When Annie explained all this to the cops, Chris was the one to shout out something about how Armin deserved it, deserved way worse than a little bit of paint, and he’d be glad to be the one to deal it out; Alan told him to shut up, but when asked if they were responsible for the threat, he and Helen both admitted to it with an unnerving pride. The officers then arrested them, citing vandalism, murderous intent, and violence. 

_“And then Alan got out of the town cop’s hold, and out of nowhere Krista just slams her leg into the back of his knees and you would expect him to just sort of stumble and fall but one leg went flying out in front of him and he landed flat on his back and got the wind knocked out of him. She’s seriously terrifying.”_

“Krista’s a goddess,” Armin said. 

_“She’s protective. I think she sees you as one of us, even though you’re not part of the show. She and Ymir have been helping us a lot the past few days.”_

“How’s the show going, by the way?,” Eren asked. “I mean, you just lost two of your cast.”

 _“Hi, Eren. They’re talking about it. Most likely, it seems like Ymir and Krista are going to fill in two roles. They can’t exactly teach all the roles to two new people, but they know them so they’re going to do it. Um, one sec.”_ There was a scratchy noise as she covered the mic with her hand, and a bit of muted talking. 

Eren and Armin looked at each other over the phone, confused. 

_“I’m back,”_ Mikasa said. _“Uh, Krista wants to talk to you.”_

“Okay.”

Mikasa handed over the phone. 

_“This is Krista.”_

“Um… hi.”

_“Hi, Armin. Haven’t seen you in a while. I’d ask how you’re doing but I think I can imagine.”_

“Hah, well, I’m doing much better now.”

_“That’s good. I wanted to ask you… Are you willing to join the show?”_

Had Armin been eating, she would have choked quite violently. “Wha-- I can’t learn all that stuff in a week and half.”

_“You won’t need to. You wouldn’t need to be part of cast-from-a-hat at all. I mean that we’d like you to join as the Usherette.”_

“Oh.” 

_“Usually we double-cast Magenta, but, particularly as it was members of our cast and crew who threatened you, we wanted to show that we support you, in whatever way we can. If you don’t want the part, I won’t see it as an insult -- unless you say that it is, in which case I will absolutely understand.”_

“I would never try to insult you. Mikasa said you helped them --”

_“That was nothing. This is about you. We want you here so we can show you, and the rest of this school that we will not tolerate such hatred. Not on our campus, and certainly not in our theatres.”_

“...So you’re using me? That’s. Um.”

 _“...”_ Krista was silent for a moment. _“It does seem that way, doesn’t it.”_

“I don’t really want to be your token trans girl.”

Krista made a strange noise, kind of like she was trying not to choke. _“I wouldn’t say you’d be a token.”_

“I’d be the only one on the cast.”

There was a pause, and then Ymir’s voice came through. _“Well, yeah, if you don’t count the choreographer.”_

Armin’s jaw dropped. Eren covered his mouth to hold back from laughing. Even Levi looked surprised, and he didn’t even know Ymir. 

_“Armin?”_

“So that’s why Mikasa said I should come out to you.”

 _“Can confirm!”_ came Mikasa’s voice, somewhat distantly, followed by a little laughter that didn’t sound like hers. 

“I had no idea.”

 _“I’m not surprised. I don’t exactly talk about it,”_ Ymir said. _“Would you like the part?”_

“...Can I have a little time to think about it? Like a couple days?”

 _“Of course,”_ Krista said. _“There’s not much preparation necessary for Trixie, besides learning her song; you don’t need to worry about our endless practice cutting into your getting back on your feet with your classes. Can you get back to me by Friday?”_

“Yeah.” 

_“All right then. Bye, Armin.”_

“Bye.” 

“Are you gonna do it?!” Eren asked, as soon as Armin hung up. 

“I don’t know!” she said. “I can think of a bunch of reasons why I shouldn’t, but I… I kind of want to. But I also don’t.” She stared at her phone, rubbing back and forth over the smudged and cracked screen before flipping it closed. “What do you think I should do?”

“Ah, that’s…” Eren scratched the back of his head. “I think you should do… what you think is right.”

“Oh, come _on_!”

“Really! It’s your decision.” 

“Levi?” Armin asked, giving him what she hoped were sufficiently adorable puppy-eyes.

Levi couldn’t hold her gaze, but he agreed with Eren. “It’s your choice,” he said to the floor. 

“You guys _suck_.” She groaned and dropped back into her seat. “You know, Eren, I’ve always followed whatever you wanted to do for a reason.”

“Really? I’ve always followed you. You’re the smart one; you make the good decisions.”

Armin looked to Levi again, not really knowing what she wanted him to say. 

“I’ll support whatever decision you make, as long as you make it for a good reason,” Levi said. “Don’t be like me. God knows I’ve made plenty of good decisions for shit reasons.”

Armin put her head down on the table. 

\---

Selected Police Reports

_6:54 PM Thurs. Apr. 3 2014_  
_Assisted Wall College Campus Police_  
_Violence_

_7:15 PM Thurs. Apr. 3 2014_  
_ARREST_  
_Violence/Vandalism/Intent_  
_ARREST_  
_Violence/Intent_  
_ARREST_  
_Violence/Vandalism/Intent/Resisting_

_7:32 PM Thurs. Apr. 3 2014_  
_Processing arrests_

_8:04 PM Thurs. Apr. 3 2014_  
_Questioning: Helen Cutter-Comstock_

_8:56 PM Thurs. Apr. 3 2014_  
_Questioning: Christopher Hopkins_

_9:30 PM Thurs. Apr. 3 2014_  
_Questioning: Alan Wilson Chapin_

_1:13 AM Fri. Apr. 4 2014_  
_Arrests processed_

\---

The Valley Chronicle: Western Massachusetts's #1 Newspaper

_**STUDENTS INVOLVED IN TRAFFIC-STOPPING VANDALISM** _

_Between the hours of 5 and 5:30 PM on March 30, 2014, three promising students of Wall College left an inflammatory message spray-painted to a dormitory facade, covering four windows. The college has been on high alert for the past few days, until the responsible individuals were apprehended on April 3 after a fistfight during rehearsal for an upcoming theatre production. Pleading guilty, they await trial as of 1:13 AM April 4._

\---

The Climb: Wall College’s Weekly News Source

_**SQUAD GOALS: 104-HOUR GUARD SUCCESSFUL; VANDALS APPREHENDED** _

_Our campus is down three aggressors, as three Wall students look forward not to graduation, but to trial for vandalism and intent to kill. Helen Cutter, Chris Hopkins, and Alan Chapin have been expelled, and good riddance. Your transmisogyny will not be missed._

_On the other hand, Armin Arlert has been missed. Off-campus for three days as a result of the violent psychological attack, she returned to classes on Wednesday. When asked what she plans to do now that she has returned to us, Miss Arlert stated, “Go to class, hopefully. Kiss my boyfriend. Spend time with my friends. We’ll see what else comes up.”_

_After just over four days of supercharged vigilance, the group known as the Ackerman Guard, consisting of nine students and three professors, remain on high alert. “You never know who could plan to retaliate,” explained Mikasa Ackerman, one of two organisers and namesakes of the Guard. “Protecting Armin is our highest priority. We won’t back down until we know she’s safe.”_

_The Ackerman Guard is not accepting new members. “Levi has enough planning hell on his hands with twelve,” said Miss Ackerman, referring to Levi Ackerman (no relation), visiting professor and co-organiser of the Guard, who declined to comment._


	38. Fool (plus) 3 (equals) Emperor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Therapy. Anger. Hugs. Resolution pt. 3 to the Jean Saga. And more!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: mention of underage sex; ableist slurs (used by a disabled person), mention of past self harm. also my apologies in advance for the mild cliffhanger; it’s because i want the next chapter to be one self-contained conversation.
> 
> some awesome and super cute art by ollizers! [[here](http://ollizers.tumblr.com/post/133317822247/)] and [[here](http://ollizers.tumblr.com/post/133317825637/)]

Eren sat up straight in bed, far too early, far too wide-eyed for the time of day. “Shit!” 

Armin yanked the covers, which Eren had dislodged, back over her head. “What nooooow?”

“We missed April Fools’ Day.”

Armin threw the covers back off. “Oh my god you’re right.”

Eren jumped up out of bed, nearly tripping over the trailing sheets. 

“What are you doing?” Armin asked. She sat up and watched him look around the room for his pants. “Eren?”

Eren found his pants on a chair in the corner and hopped around trying to get them on in the semi-dark. “I have to get something ready before Levi gets back!”

“Oh. Okay…” She got out of bed too. “Where is he anyway?”

“Gym?” Eren shrugged. “Whatever. He has whipped cream and aluminum pie tins.”

“ _Eren._ ”

“Whipped cream is, like, the easiest thing to clean. It’ll be fine.”

Armin rolled her eyes. “Was getting pied in the face not enough for you?”

“Nope.” He opened the bedroom door, only to find Levi in the other side, glaring. 

“Morning, Eren,” Levi said. 

Eren screamed. 

“You know, I was going to surprise you when I got back.”

Eren stared, wide-eyed, wondering what sort of torture that surprise could be. He tried not to scream a second time. 

“Armin, why don’t you shower first?” 

“Did you tell him yet?” she asked. She could tell, by the way Levi’s eyes traced down and back up Eren’s body, that it was not torture he had in mind at all. 

“Tell me what?” Eren cut in. He was too afraid to notice Levi eyeing him. 

Levi blinked. “Uh, no.” He looked away. “I forgot.”

Armin pursed her lips. “Hoped I’d forget, you mean.”

“What’s going on?” Eren asked, completely baffled. 

“I’ll tell you later,” Levi said, shoving his way into the room. “It’s a long conversation, we don’t have time for it now. I’ll see you in class. No surprises for you.” He then grabbed a towel and disappeared into the bathroom. 

“What was that about?” Eren asked, this time of Armin. 

She glared at the closed bathroom door, but almost immediately that expression softened. “He’s just having trouble talking about something with you. He’ll get there. He asked me to be a hardass about it, so I know at some level he wants to tell you.”

Eren stared wistfully at the bathroom door; he could hear the shower start up. “Should I ask him about it?”

“Not right now. It really is a long conversation.”

“So you know what it is.”

“I do. I hope you’re not --”

“I’m not jealous,” Eren said, too fast. But then his shoulder slumped, and he amended: “Maybe I am a little.”

“He’ll tell you. And when he does, you’ll understand why it took him so long.”

“How long have you known?” Eren asked, looking scandalised. 

Armin chuckled. “Only a week or so. It wasn’t like he was itching to tell me.” She hugged him, hoping it would make him feel better. 

“I just… want to know things about him,” Eren said. “I like knowing things about him. He’s so closed-off.”

“It’s his thing. And he’s opening up a lot to you. You never see the way he smiles at you.” 

Eren rubbed his face against Armin’s extra-flurry morning hair and kind of squealed. He saw it sometimes; maybe it was just the rarity of it but it kind of made his heart twist every time it happened. And even though, according to Armin, he wasn’t seeing much of Levi’s rare smiles, it was happening more and more often that he could see. Mostly it was in Levi’s eyes, but it was there. He was happy, and he was willing to show it. 

“Aww, cute,” Armin said. 

“Shut up, _you’re_ cute,” Eren mumbled, earning a mouthful of hair for his troubles. He kind of expected it to taste citrus-y, pale orange that it was, but it didn't. It just tasted like hair. “I still wish he would have told me.” 

“He would have. He’d have told you Sunday night if not for… well, what happened Sunday night.” Armin moved back a little to look at Eren, only noticing then that he was chewing on her hair. “Don’t do that. Eren, he’ll tell you tonight. I don’t even think you need to ask him. But… please support him. Besides… I know things about you that you’re not ready to tell him, right?”

Eren grimaced. “We’ve been friends for years, though. It’s different.”

“You never had to tell me. I would have just accepted your parents adopted Mikasa and left it at that.”

“I can’t tell him that. It’s not about me.” 

“I’m not saying you have to. I don’t think he expects you to either. Just… please let him be the one to tell you this, on his own terms. And then you can decide if it made sense for him to wait.” 

Eren frowned like he wanted to disagree, but it was a reasonable request. “Okay.” He couldn’t keep the disgruntled note out of his voice. 

Levi emerged from his bathroom then, wearing a white robe and chased by billowing steam. They hadn’t even noticed the water shut off. “Shower’s open. Get a move on.”

“We don’t have to be in class for another two hours,” Eren whined. 

“Yeah, well, I have somewhere to be, so I can’t be here to rush you.” That explained why he showered so fast. Usually he took at least a half-hour. 

“Where are you going?” Eren asked, as Levi swept past him towards his closet. 

“Therapy,” Levi said, and left it at that. 

“Come on,” Armin said. She tugged Eren along by the hand. “We’ll shower together.” 

Eren looked back at Levi for a few seconds more while he walked backwards, until he nearly tripped over his own feet. 

As soon as the bathroom door closed behind the pair, Levi knelt down on the floor in front of his closet and rested his head against it with a thunk. A look of pain came into his face. 

_He doesn’t trust me anymore._

In the shower, Eren and Armin were quiet. It was a comfortable quiet, the kind bred from familiarity, but they also stayed apart, sharing the space but effectively showering alone, because they both just wanted to think for a little while. 

Eventually, Eren deemed himself clean and, not one to stand around for longer than necessary, he sat down at the bottom of the bath and watched Armin and the water running down her back. 

He’d done this once with Levi; showered together. It had been awkward more than anything else, because dating was new to them and they’d been very naked and the hug they’d shared didn’t make anything easier. Eren still remembered that feeling; wet bodies stuck together, Levi’s muscles moving against his skin, Levi’s cock resting against his thigh --

Eren blushed hard and covered his face with his hand as if someone was watching him. 

He wanted to do that again. He wanted to do everything with Levi, as much as he wanted that with Armin. And that he still wanted it, even if he wasn’t sure how much he trusted Levi, must mean something. 

He loved Levi, after all. Love was something that confused Eren more than anything else, but it was also something he felt very strongly. It was one-third emotion and two-thirds decision; you had to put in effort to love someone. It was never easy. But, to Eren, it would be worth it. 

He decided that, like he did every day, though not always so consciously. It would be worth it. 

_I’ll wait,_ he thought. _I’ll wait as long as he needs._

Armin turned around at that moment. She smiled down at Eren. “Ready to get out?” 

“Yeah.” 

Levi was just about dressed when they got out, lacing up his white boots, newly wiped clean and polished. When he stood, Eren swooped in to give him a kiss. 

“See you in class,” Eren said. 

Levi’s twisted, withered little heart sang. 

\---

“I never told you about my life before you met me, did I?”

Erwin pushed his glasses up on his nose and raised his impressive eyebrows. He positioned his pen over a blank sheet of paper. “You didn’t tell me much.”

“What did I say?” Levi remembered a few things he’d said over the years, but he had no clue what he could have babbled out while high on that life-changing night six years previous, when Erwin peeled him off of rock bottom. He could have said anything. 

From memory, Erwin recounted; “You never knew your father, and your mother died of an illness when you were four. You were raised for a few years by your uncle, whose name you wouldn’t tell me; he taught you to fight, and you hated him. You went to an orphanage after that because he, as you said, ‘got tired of you’. You lived with three foster families and ran away from all of them. You briefly lived on the street with old acquaintances from the orphanage who you came to call your siblings. You once got arrested for stabbing someone in self-defense while on some sort of criminal probation for repeated misdemeanors and you went to a correctional facility. You were illiterate until you were fifteen, but you had a GED by eighteen.” He clicked his pen twice. “That’s all you told me.” 

It was more than Levi expected, but not by much, and it wasn’t anything he felt strongly about hiding, except for the fact that he wanted to hide away everything about the person he used to be. “Nothing else?”

“No.”

Levi trusted Erwin’s memory and dedication to his job, if nothing else, so he must have been honest. 

“Are you… intending to talk about it more?”

“Don’t look so excited. I’m not telling you shit.”

Erwin, to his credit, did not sulk; he did, however, narrow his eyes slightly. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I just wanted to know what you knew.” 

“Why is it important to you?” Erwin asked. 

“I’m planning to tell Eren something today. Something you don’t know -- and you’re not getting it out of me, so don’t ask.” 

“Did you want to know if you’d already told me about it?”

“I guess so. It’s sort of, well, if I’d told you and not him, that makes me kind of an asshole.” 

“That makes me feel great about our friendship. Thanks, Levi.” 

Levi glared at Erwin; its effect was slightly lessened by his reclined position on Erwin’s office couch. “I hope you’re more professional with your other patients.”

“My other clients,” he corrected, and continued; “My work for them actually follows ethical psychiatric practice. I don’t know that it’s fair to compare them.” Erwin shook his head. Somehow they managed to touch on this every few of their somewhat scattered meetings. As if the months of fights between the court systems and the APA were not enough to settle the matter. “Also, you told me not to be sweet with you.” 

“Yeah. Because you’re creepy when you’re trying to be nice.” 

“So are you.”

“Says _you_.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, whose boyfriend got freaked out when he tried to buy him a few hundred dollars’ worth of art supplies for his birthday?” 

Levi pursed his lips. “Point taken.” 

Erwin wondered if it really was any sort of improvement for Levi to work with him. They often spent half of their sessions making fun of each other; there was too much blur between familiarity and professionalism between them to avoid it. But… 

Levi wasn’t getting anywhere without him. He tried to work things out on his own, and wouldn’t tell anyone, even Erwin, very much about himself, as evidenced by the fact that Erwin knew only very little of Levi’s past. As if that wasn’t enough, Levi would often, on an upswing, declare himself “healed” and disappear from Erwin’s office, rejecting all appointments for months. He wouldn’t return until Erwin more or less broke into his apartment and found him scraping away at the sealant over his cement floor to get at the caked-on paint flakes underneath, or tearing at his skin and hair in an attempt to remove any inconsistencies. Or sometimes he’d hear from Hanji -- but usually that was for the shorter breaks, the more rapid declines, because she broke into Levi’s apartment more or less on the weekly. 

And then Erwin would force a session on him right then and there. Even on the off-chance Levi wasn’t ruining himself or his surroundings in some way, in a fruitless attempt at creating order, Erwin would still sit him down, because it was only a matter of time. He could always tell by the frenzied look in Levi’s eyes, the little bit of flicker few ever noticed; he could tell by the way Levi said “I’m fine” and wasn’t fine at all. He knew, when he took on Levi as a client, that he’d be this difficult. After all, Erwin had been the one watching over him when Levi was a college student and Erwin was (unknown at the time to Levi) a post-med grad student, returning to college, after a war he’d loved far too much for his own good, to find some direction with the once-comfortable static hierarchy of the army behind him. He’d seen Levi’s early panic attacks, his dissociative episodes; he’d seen half the scars left on Levi’s body (and more) as self-inflicted wounds while they bled. He knew well Levi’s refusal to see a counselor, to even talk to anyone he didn’t trust to an extreme. And when he’d dragged Levi to rehab, he knew the only reason Levi said anything to the therapists he was nearly forced to see was that he wouldn’t ever get out otherwise, but he told them the bare minimum. 

Erwin may not be able to help Levi as much as he wanted, but he was helping more than any other therapist could, and for now he was content with that. 

He couldn’t say he was helping as much as Eren and Armin, though. Erwin had never met them, but he knew Levi well, and despite his perpetual frown there was a light in his eyes that had changed these past few months. He looked happy, or at least content, comfortable. His skin that Erwin could see was free of injuries, save for those inflicted by the mouths of his partners; even the skin around his nails was whole. He’d had a few panic attacks, but nothing so serious as the ones Erwin usually found him enduring in his “breaks”. 

Erwin suspected it had much less to do with Dr. Smith, Psy.D., M.D., than his ego might like. 

“You’re really in love with them, aren’t you?” Erwin mused. He knew love alone wouldn’t be enough to save his friend, but the choices Levi was making as a result of love, or in its name, could. 

Levi spluttered, not expecting that in the least. “Just Eren,” he finally articulated. “I’m not in love with Armin. I like her, I mean, obviously. But.”

“If you say so.” Erwin suspected it might be a different story in a few weeks. Levi always was the zero-to-sixty type in everything else he did; it followed that if he should fall in love, it would be fast, and the signs would be there early -- and god, were the signs ever there. 

It wasn’t the kind of love Levi would recognise as such, but in a way any liking was a form of love. And Levi cared about her -- extensively so. Enough to make him cautious that he wouldn’t say he loved her before he really was sure that he did. 

“What are you going to tell Eren?” Erwin asked. 

“Haha. My defenses are never that low, you useless fuck.” 

“What a creative insult,” Erwin said, sounding so excessively genuine that the sarcasm spoke for itself. 

“Why do you put up with me anyway? I’m an asshole to you, and you really didn’t have to take me on as a patient.”

“Client,” he corrected again. “I put up with you because you’re my friend.”

“Why would you want me as a friend? I’m not asking this because I’m feeling sorry for myself, by the way. I purposefully make myself unlikeable.”

“And that’s exactly why I like you. I find it funny.” 

“You find it funny that I treat you like shit?” 

Erwin smiled and twirled his pen. “I throw it right back, don’t I?” 

“Hm.” He couldn’t disagree. 

“I find it funny that you treat me like shit, and you’re generally an unpleasant person to be around, but it’s all completely an act to protect yourself. I can understand why now, but when I first met you I just found it fascinating how you could be so unlike yourself.” 

_Unlike yourself_.That sounded familiar to Levi, somehow. Oh, right -- “ _I think the person you think you are, and the person you want everyone else to see you as, is pretty different from who you actually are._ ” So it wasn’t just a weird Eren Thing; Erwin noticed it too. 

“Is that something you want to talk about?”

Levi sighed loudly. “No. I don’t really want to talk about anything. I feel like I’m wasting both our time.”

“You’re not wasting time,” Erwin said. “We could talk about something you’ve left unresolved from past sessions.”

“Like what?”

“Perhaps your reluctance to partake in sexual intercourse with your boyfr--”

“ _Resolved._ Christ, why do you have to say it like that? So clinical.”

Erwin smiled. “Congratulations.”

“I haven’t _done it_ yet, I just want to again.”

“Congratulations anyway,” Erwin said, while he made note of Levi’s admissions. “What changed?”

“I was waiting for him to fall in love with me, apparently. And he did.” 

“Why do you think that is?”

“Why do _what_ is?” Levi said, so intelligible. 

“Why,” Erwin specified, “do you think it is that you needed him to fall in love with you in order for your attraction to him to return?”

“Attra--” Levi squinted at Erwin. “I was always attracted to him.”

“Not sexually.”

“ _Yes_ , sexually. Have you been listening? He’s always been hot, I’ve always wanted to fuck him, I just… well, for a while, I didn’t feel right acting on it.”

“So your fantasies were unaffected?”

Levi pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyes. “Sex is only ever awkward when I have to talk to _you_ about it!” 

“Levi.” 

“Yeah, fine, my _fantasies_ were _unaffected_.” He shuddered for emphasis. 

“So there was a disconnect between your fantasies and your actions. I wonder if that’s a matter of executive function? But no, you didn’t even want to act in the first place. Hm.” Erwin tapped his pen against his notebook while he thought. 

“It’s…” Levi sighed. “Maybe it’s a risk thing.” 

“Hm?”

“Risk. You know how I do all these risky things and keep doing them until they turn out badly?”

“I’m familiar with your behaviour, yes.” 

Levi chewed his lip. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he also really did, but he wouldn’t tell fucking Erwin before he managed to get it out to Eren. So he’d say a little bit, just enough to placate Erwin, and enough to get the cogs in Erwin’s overly-analytical brain turning. “I sort of… set up a really bad experience for myself, years ago. It involved sex. And -- no.”

“No?”

“Wait.” Levi sat up and rubbed his head, trying to remember a dusty, cobwebbed memory he hadn’t tried to think about beyond the surface level chain of events for the last half of his life. “No. I was the same then. I didn’t love him, and he didn’t love me, but I think…” He trailed off for a moment, then came back. “We felt the _same_ for each other. And I guess that was enough.” He couldn’t even remember why he’d brought it up anymore. There was a point he’d been trying to make but he didn’t know what it was, or if it had even made sense in the first place. 

“Is this something I don’t know anything about?”

“Yes. And I’m not going to tell you about it.” Levi suddenly felt very small. He realised in that moment that he probably couldn’t get away with keeping it in much longer. “At least, not now.” He rubbed his head again. “God, this is so confusing. I haven’t even thought about this in years. It didn’t _matter_. But now it’s… it keeps coming up. I just want to leave it in the past.” 

“Our past has a way of catching up with us.” 

“Oh, fuck your philosophy. This is real-life fucking trauma.”

“Trau--” 

“Yes, trauma. I’ve had a fuckload of it. I don’t talk about it because I don’t like people thinking I’m weak. But you know enough about my weaknesses already, don’t you, Mr. Savior?” Levi spat his words like he truly hated the man in front of him, and for a moment he did. “My life is one trauma after another and I thought I dealt with it on my own. I guess I didn’t. But, fuck, my -- what was it -- _disconnect_ has nothing to do with it, so why am I even bringing it up?”

“You probably want to talk about it,” Erwin offered, like it was obvious. 

“No. I don’t. For once, _Doctor Smith_ , I do not fucking want to talk about it with you.” Levi stood up and, feeling unraveled and unresolved and like he’d wasted his time even coming over in the first place, he left the room without so much as a parting glance. 

He took his coat from the rack by the receptionist’s desk and ignored her wondering why he was leaving early as he raced time out of the building. Erwin wouldn’t follow; if he did, Levi would just run for it. He’d always been faster. 

But Erwin didn’t follow. Levi made it out to the street in peace, and he paused for a moment to breathe before heading off towards the college. It was a half hour if he walked, and he had the extra time left over from what would -- should have been more therapy, but he couldn’t handle it. So even though no-one was following him, he ran. 

He needed something that would calm him down. Eren? Eren always knew what to do, but no, he couldn’t ask Eren. He’d have to explain what caused it; that would take too long. And besides, this wasn’t a panic attack. He was just _angry_ , well and truly angry about the circumstances he’d just gotten himself into. 

No, Levi needed something else. Something that knew his darkest parts. Something soft, with a flowery smell and an incomparable warmth. 

He needed Armin. 

Levi redirected and stopped by his apartment, though it was completely out of the way, on the other side of town with the campus in between, in the hopes that his -- fuck he never decided what to call them -- Eren and Armin hadn’t left yet, or maybe he’d pass them on the way. It seemed they’d just left, though, and taken a different route than the one he used to get here, and now he was left with about ten minutes to get to his class. 

So he ran again. 

His cape slowed him down immensely, as did his jeans and boots not even slightly intended for such agile movement. He was grateful, in the bit of his mind he could spare for it, that at least it hadn’t rained recently, or he’d be splashing through puddles and making a mess of his clothing. Levi was quite certain no-one in this town had ever seen him run with such desperation. His early-morning runs were purely for exercise and accompanied by a calm usually inaccessible to him, and very few people ever saw him so early anyway. But here he was, sprinting and dodging pedestrians, all in the hopes of getting to class a minute early to steal a hug from Armin. 

It seemed crazy, and Levi knew crazy. He knew it well; his own insanity followed him around like a shadow. The frenzy felt like obsession, this forward push felt like compulsion, but it wasn’t -- it was his own conscious choice. There was no panic or pain or clouded-over brain dragging him along. He just… wanted. And so he was going to get what he wanted. 

He raced students up the stairs, two steps at a time, as if he was one of them, trying to get to class on time as if it mattered, as if he really needed to be there anyway. For once he didn’t even think about how ridiculous he looked, or what anyone would think of him; he stopped short just at the door to the classroom and leaned against the frame, breathing heavily. 

“Armin,” he gasped out, making eye contact with her. She was startled, there was no doubt about it, and he could see from the door how her hand squeezed tighter around Eren’s. “I need to talk to you.” 

She hesitated, but left her seat, left Eren’s hand cold. Fuck. Levi would make it up to him. He _would_. He’d tell him everything tonight. 

“Did something happen?” Armin asked. “Do I… Do I need to leave again?”

Levi was confused at first, but when he realised she thought she’d been threatened again, he shook his head. “No. No, you’re fine. Just… come with me. To my office,” he added as an afterthought. 

Armin nodded and followed him; the office wasn’t far by any means but it felt like it took forever to walk over. 

“What did you need to talk about?” she asked, as soon as she was in the room. 

Levi let the door shut behind him and then leaned into her, wrapping his arms around her slowly but tightly. “I just needed this.”

“Oh,” she breathed, relieved. Armin hugged him back, smiling as she rested her forehead against his. “You had me worried.”

“Yeah. Didn’t mean to.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, really. Well, I almost told my therapist about… about what I did. You know, what I have to tell Eren. And I didn’t want to do that. Eren deserves to know first. I want to tell him first. I just got angry with myself.”

“Feeling any better now?” 

“A bit.” 

“That’s good.” She rubbed his back in little circles. “Why me? Wouldn’t it make more sense to hug Eren?”

“He wouldn’t know why. I’ll hug him plenty later, don’t you worry.” 

Armin chuckled. “You’re telling me not to worry?”

“Hypocritical, I know.” 

She laughed again. “You know, I’m kind of glad you came to me. I like that I can help you feel better.”

“Oh?”

“Mm-hmm. I care about you, so…” 

Levi leaned his head back so he could look at her. “Do you mean that?” 

“Of course.” 

Levi’s expression softened, melting away from his usual stone-and-steel into something not quite happy, because Levi never looked happy when he thought someone was watching, but certainly content. Content and a little longing. 

She kissed his forehead, which made him feel a little childish, but it was fine. Everyone should feel a little childish from time to time; it keeps us human. “We should get back; class already started by now.”

“Yeah. Yeah, oh, fuck, I took you out of class. I’m sorry.”

“Wh-- sorry? You never apologise.” 

“Well, I just did.” He couldn’t quite make himself let go; he was just so comfortable… 

But Armin had other plans. “Come on,” she said, breaking away. “You can cuddle with Eren all you want tonight.”

“Just Eren? Are you not coming back with us?” 

“Nope. I already arranged to stay with Annie. She’s in an open double.” Armin didn’t mention the obvious; it still wasn’t entirely safe for her to go back to her own room for much longer than it took to grab some clothes. “You have fun, okay?” 

Levi nodded. “We will. Stay safe.” 

“I know.” She kissed him properly, then led the way back to class. 

\---

“I’m sorry.” 

Eren stuck his pinkie in his ear and twisted it a little, then inspected the tip of his finger for anything that may have obstructed his hearing. “Can you repeat that?”

Jean blinked slowly, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at Eren’s antics. “I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t understand what I was saying at the time. But now I do, and I’m not going to say it again.”

Eren took out his phone. “Mind if I get a recording?” he asked, all mocking. 

“Jesus Christ, Eren. I’m actually trying to make things better, and you’re just being your usual asshole self.”

“Yeah, and?” 

“Do you not even care if I apologise to you or not?” 

Eren shrugged. “It’s not like we’re friends.”

“Not like --” Jean grit his teeth. “I’ve been trying to be your friend since I met you.”

“Yeah, right. Why do you keep making fun of me, then?”

“ _You_ keep making fun of _me_!” 

They were still at a reasonable volume, but the emotion in their voices was enough to get a few people nearby to stare. 

“I get that I hurt you,” Jean said. “I do. And I want to fix it. But you’ve been looking for reasons to flip out on me ever since I told you I was an art minor.”

“Not quite,” Eren corrected. “It was when you told me you were an art minor _because_ you didn’t think artists make money.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“That’s exactly what you said.”

“No, it’s not.” Jean stepped closer. “I told you that in order to effect the social changes I think need to happen, I’d need influence, either economically or politically, and art doesn’t guarantee either of them nearly as much as government and economics majors do. I said I’m willing to become part of the machine in order to dismantle it. I said I didn’t have the courage it would take to pursue art as social reform, or at all. I _complimented_ you for having that courage.”

“Sounds like a load of horse shit, which, coming from you, horse-face, isn’t a surprise.” 

“Fine. Fine!” Jean stepped forward once more, shoving his finger in Eren’s face. “You go ahead and think what you want of me. But you’re wrong.” 

“Prove it.”

“Oh, just kiss already.” 

Jean jumped back, and Eren almost tripped over the drawing horse behind him while trying to do the same. They stared, shocked, at Sasha, who had just interrupted them, and who looked ready to start throwing grapes at them. 

“Kiss?!” Eren squeaked. 

“You heard me. Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” she chanted, and soon the other students started to join in. 

Jean’s face heated up. “Oh my god.” 

“I am not kissing him,” Eren said, pointing at Jean for emphasis. 

“Then do _something_!” Sasha implored. Next to her, Mikasa had her palm starfished over her face, so no-one could tell whether she was ashamed or fighting laughter. 

“Fucking -- ignore them,” Jean said. “Just think about what I said, okay? I really am trying to do better.”

“He is!” Sasha stage-whispered. 

“What’s going on?” Armin asked, finally returned. Levi, behind her, was also confused. 

“Eren and Jean were having sexual tension,” Sasha relayed. 

“We were _not_ ,” Eren corrected. 

“Did Jean apologise?” Armin asked. 

“Yeah. He didn’t want to hear it though,” Jean said. 

“I’m not obligated to forgive you,” Eren said. 

“I get that. I’m just annoyed that you never bothered to listen to me from the very beginning.”

“That’s because you’re an asshole.”

“You’re an asshole!” 

At this point Jean and Eren had once more come close enough that they were cross-eyed trying to see each other. With fists clenched at their sides, teeth grit… they really had that look about them, as if one of them -- and it wasn’t clear which -- was about to shove the other against the nearest vertical surface for a taste of his tongue. 

Eren licked his lips. 

“Class is starting,” Professor Shadis called. The students, one-by-one, reluctantly broke away from the bad rom-com scene about to unfold before them, and with their dispersing came the dissipation of Eren and Jean’s tension. 

It was all for show, after all. Everyone knew that. 

“I still haven’t forgiven you,” Eren said. That, at least, was true. 

“I know.” Jean gave him a lopsided little smile. “But you say ‘still’ like you know you will.”

He walked away before Eren could disagree. 

\---

Fear. That was what gripped Levi’s chest tight when Eren tried to follow him home after class, rather than stick around and do homework as he normally would. Levi told him to stay, to have lunch with Armin since she wouldn’t be coming back with them that night, to do homework and go to work and then, at the end of it all, come home with no distractions. 

It made sense; for something this important, Levi would take no chances that he’d have to cut the conversation short. If he got going, and then had to stop, who knew if he’d ever be able to take the stress out of himself again for long enough to get back to it? And it was important. Important enough to tell in one shot. There was no chaptering this story. 

But it wasn’t any logical reason like that which made Levi brush Eren off. It was just fear. 

And fear, of course, signalled things Levi had to do in order to improve his life. That didn’t make it any easier, though, so after less than an hour in front of his painting of Eren he sighed and cleaned his brushes and called it a day, instead reclining on his couch and deciding that was where he would remain for the rest of the afternoon until Eren came back, because all his brain would let him do was think about the memories -- and one memory in particular -- that he needed to relay. 

It was easier with Armin. Levi hadn’t expected to tell her anything; there was no psyching himself up, no prolonged period of waiting to send him through stress cycles that got bigger and bigger like winding a ball of yarn. It just came out, and even if it was hard, it happened, and Levi didn’t have to think about it. But he was certainly thinking now. And he had no clue what to say. He barely remembered how he’d explained it to Armin; only that he’d been honest, brutally so, and to Armin’s credit she didn’t cry or gasp or interrupt him; she just let him talk until he was done and at the end of it she said she didn’t agree that he should blame himself entirely, but she understood why he did. 

These kids were too damn trusting of him. They saw him as too good of a person. He’d lied, stolen, nearly killed (had he killed?), and to top it all off… 

He tried writing. It didn’t make sense to do so; Levi had never been good at writing. Aside from his only tentative grasp at spelling, he found it harder to express himself when he could see everything wrong with what he’d already put down on the page. He went back, trying to insert new information in between what was there, crossing out long bits of repetition; vast paragraphs made no sense at all, even to his re-reading eyes. 

By the time he realised it wouldn’t help, it was already six, and he had less than two hours until he could expect to see Eren again. He crumpled up the pages, wishing he had a fireplace he could throw them all into. Instead he smoothed them out again and ran them through the paper shredder he usually used for junk mail and paid bills and awful sketches. 

It was, in a way, another awful sketch. 

Resuming his position supine on the sofa, Levi stared at the ceiling, hoping the flat off-white would give him some miraculous answers. It did not, and in the end, Eren knocked on his front door and Levi opened it for him and he had nothing. 

“Hey,” Levi said. He didn’t meet Eren’s eyes until he noticed Eren was wearing glasses again, and he found himself captivated by the mismatched irises behind them. 

“Hi.” Eren stepped forward, hugged Levi, kissed him. Levi hurt. 

He wasn’t ready, and he never would be. 

He was going to do it anyway. 

“We need to talk,” Levi said. 

“We do,” Eren agreed. “Couch?” 

Levi looked at the cushions he’d occupied for the better part of the last six hours or so. It was as good a place as any. It was where he’d told Armin, after all. “Yeah.” He started to move, but Eren’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. 

“Hey,” Eren said. He only continued when Levi looked back at him. “I love you.”

The tiniest of smiles graced Levi’s mouth. “Love you too.” It would be okay.


	39. Learning to Read

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi’s story, told by Levi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: ableist and homophobic slurs. discussions of sexual assault. poverty, starvation, criminal activity, minor character death, murder… a lot of things. you can skip this chapter entirely if you need to. also this chapter is mostly in first person because it's one big monologue.

I guess I should start from the beginning. 

You should know, this isn’t going to be happy. At no point of what I’m about to tell you does anything good happen. 

Are you ready? 

Are you _sure_?

My earliest memories are of a dark, dusty, filthy room, where I ate, bathed, slept, and shat. I didn’t know what city we lived in, but it was always loud. My mother was the only other person in that room; it was still too small even for us. The size of a closet, and it always, always smelled like shit. I think they might have called it a studio apartment, but it was more like a compost barrel. I’m amazed anyone ever came to her; but then, anyone who did was at their limit. They couldn’t find anyone else. 

We had one bed, twin-size, between the two of us. It wasn’t comfortable by any stretch of the imagination; felt like there were rocks in it. And we had one blanket. No sheets; she used them for her… clients. 

Yes, sex work runs in the family. 

We had one change of clothes each. She didn’t have shoes for the last year she was with me. Our saving grace was that being short was in her blood, and so in mine; I didn’t grow fast enough to outgrow my clothes more than once a year. Maybe that wasn’t the case when I was a baby, but I don’t remember that far, and I guess she could have just wrapped me up in a towel or something. 

I remember being hungry. It was rare that I had enough to fill my stomach. I remember, more times than I want to, seeing there was only barely enough food for me at the table and Mama telling me to eat and promising… “I promise, Levi, I’ll eat later. You eat more now. Make Mama happy.” And she never did eat those days. She wanted to make sure I survived, but I was barely surviving, and every time I looked she was sicker than the time before. I thought Mama was the most beautiful woman in the world, but the only women I knew were as sick as her, and now I know better -- most of the time she looked like a corpse. We were about as close to dead as we could be while still breathing air. 

I was always clean though; Mama made sure of that. We didn’t have running water but she bathed me every time it rained, and when it didn’t for a while she’d still find a way. She didn’t want me catching any of her diseases. 

I don’t know which one killed her, but I’m healthy, so I guess she wasn’t wrong. Then again… well, when I went into sex work, I had enough money left over from my campus job to get condoms. She didn’t. And you know when I was born. I can take a pretty good guess, but like I said, I don’t know for sure what it was that killed her. 

I was alone for a few days after she died -- just me and Mama’s corpse. It was horrifying. None of the other women she knew would help me; they had enough on their hands with their kids, and their clients, and they knew if they got too involved they’d end up taking me in and they couldn’t support me. Mama was the only person I cared about in the world, and I just had to sit there with her body, hungry, cold, until my uncle found out and he picked me up. He had her cremated, which he said was what she wanted. It sounded about right to me; it’d be cleaner than a burial. 

My father? I don’t have a father. 

My uncle taught me how to fight, he gave me good meals and a place to live that wasn’t in danger of falling apart at any moment, and that was about all the good he ever did for me. I always wondered why he never came to visit us before. Knowing Mama, she never told anyone we were poor. Not even her brother. So I got that. 

We Ackermans… we’re pretty proud. Proud enough to die in poverty, proud enough to take in a kid and then kick him out when he becomes too much trouble. When I could fight on my own, my uncle left me at… well, they call it a “children’s home” but it’s an orphanage. It was a shithole when I was there; they’re actually bothering to keep it up now, because I shove enough money at them that they can. I was about six then. I was cute, apparently, even as malnourished as I was, so a couple foster families offered to take care of me, until word got out that I was apparently Satan incarnate. I bit kids, I swore at adults, I couldn’t read, I only spoke to say something vulgar, I knew too much about sex. The only thing I liked was animals, but the parents always thought I’d kill them. So I just kept running away. 

The orphanage stopped bothering to find me a home after that. I was better in a crowd. I didn’t fight kids who were as sad as I was. And I had outlets for my anger. Whenever one of us got angry the directors, caretakers, whatever they were, would give us a task to do and tell us to do it until we weren’t angry anymore, and then we’d talk about it. Usually they had me clean or fix something, since I always did a good job of it and I didn’t mind like most of the kids did. I never really got to the talking part though; I wasn’t ever angry at anything in particular, at least nothing I could name. Thing is, I was angry almost all the time. So I was almost always cleaning, or fixing, or doing something that in that excess kept the strength I’d built learning to fight. 

Usually you’d expect kids to be scared of the angry, jacked one with the dead eyes, but since they usually saw me either cleaning or drawing I guess they decided I was okay. I ended up being sort of the mom-friend, if you could really call any of us friends. We commiserated, mostly. 

I still hated it. I left when I was thirteen, snuck out, and tried to live on the street. The problem was, I left in November, and starting the homeless life as winter sets in is a horrible idea. I slept in trash, surrounded by stray dogs and cats. I don’t even know what I ate. I almost died. I would have, but two kids who also ran away from the same orphanage found me. Farlan and Isabel. They were a little older than I was, but they couldn’t fight, so I ended up as their leader. I call them my brother and sister, even though none of us are related. 

We caused a lot of trouble. 

I joined something like a fight club; fought guys three to four times my size, won, broke their bones sometimes, and got paid for it. Sometimes they’d try for a vengeance match in the street; I always won that too, usually faster. 

Still, they only met every few weeks so the fighters could recover, and it wasn’t enough for the three of us to survive on alone. So we ended up stealing what we could. They were much better at it than I was; I got caught annoyingly often. 

We had time to waste -- we could have spent that time begging, but we were all too proud, and honestly I’m embarrassed of that. We, mostly I, thought we were above everyone else. I don’t know why I thought that; I never really had been brought up to think that. Maybe it was because of the fighting, since I was so good at it. 

But… we had time to waste. Isabel remembered I was pretty good at art, even if my drawings were… grotesque. Honestly I think she was the only one who ever saw them; I didn’t want to scare anyone. But she did, so she decided I should continue it and we stole paint and Isabel and I covered walls in my sickening designs. We signed them “Le Creux” -- well, Isabel did. Like I said, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write. 

“Le Creux” was this big pun on my last name and our lives in general. Farlan suggested it; I don’t know where he learned French. I also don’t really know what he did while we were off vandalising condemned buildings, but he always came back with a little money. He always seemed kind of sad about it, so I never asked. I always told him to come with us; he and Isabel had stuck together because he was blind and she was deaf and they didn’t have the means to work with that alone. But he always refused. I was always worried about him. But I still never asked, because of my pride. 

And when I was fifteen I got arrested. What happened was, some dick I’d already kicked to shit in a match tried to fight me again, and I ended up stabbing him with his own knife. And a cop saw us. He probably would have let me off, since it was self-defense, had I not been a homeless kid with a string of thefts to my name. 

So I went to a correctional facility. Haven’t seen Isabel and Farlan since; I wouldn’t dare give them away just to let them know where I was headed. They probably think I died. I don’t even know if they’re alive; I couldn’t find them when I got out. 

But, well. I guess the important part starts here. 

Correctional facilities are… well, they’re not fun. They suck. You’re there because you’re a criminal, and everyone around you is also a criminal. It’s not precisely jail, but you’re guilty of a crime and you can’t leave until you’ve served your whole punishment. 

The one I was at was a men’s facility only, sectioned off between minors and adults. We came together for meals, and sometimes for group therapy or whatever else needed overlap. Though “minors” was kind of loose; if you committed the crime as a minor, you were tried as a minor, and so you went to the minors’ facility, even if you were an adult when you came, and you stayed there if you turned eighteen. So there were a few twenty-somethings near the end of their time; there were kids who’d done something fucked up the night before they turned eighteen because it was the last time they could be tried as a minor. There were kids like me, who’d got the short end of every stick and then hurt someone, and we were younger than the rest, but we never shared our ages. Remember that. 

I was still fifteen when I got there. My term was three years, which was long, unreasonably so; I didn’t even hit anything important when I stabbed the guy. But like I said. Homeless. Criminal history. And the guy turned the both of us in for fighting and illegal gambling, so that certainly didn’t help me. I couldn’t read, so I got in trouble a lot when I missed the signs posted about what we could and couldn’t do, what was broken, where we weren’t allowed to go. Finally they set me up with a teacher; he was there on a sentence too, and a long one, but from what I understood he hadn’t really done anything wrong. From what he told me, he stepped down as CEO of some big company that ran in his family so he could teach, left it to his friend to run while he kept the title for family reasons, and signed off on everything that came under his nose, including the wildly illegal policies that he didn’t read. His friend got a decade in prison; he got a decade in correction, and an asshole of a student for his troubles. 

I was obstinate and angry, but he was patient with me; he’d taught remedial English and monitored detention, so he was used to it. Eventually I started to actually enjoy what I was doing. I didn’t let anyone else know; I mean, who the hell wants to learn how to read at fifteen? That’s… kid shit. But he respected me. I’d never really felt respected before; even the other minors, the ones who were actually kids like I was, didn’t respect me because I was short and, as they said, dumb. Being the mom-friend gets you respect at an orphanage; not so much in jail. 

I think that was what I enjoyed about the whole learning to read thing. Being respected. 

I can’t tell if I’m getting off track. Is any of this making sense to you? 

Well, it might not surprise you to hear he was the first man I was ever attracted to. He wasn’t attractive; I look back on the whole thing now and honestly, he was kind of average-looking. But I spent a few hours a day with him and whatever books were clean enough for criminals to read. There were a lot of fairy tales; they were repetitive and frequently misogynistic, but after a while I started to see myself as the princess. It all kind of went downhill from there. 

Around him, I just… I must have thought the sun shined by the fluorescent lights reflecting off his bald spot. I thought his shit didn’t stink, and his bed made itself. I idolised him. When I was around him, I paid attention to nothing else. Nothing else mattered. I lost time, forgot how much of an asshole I was trying to be -- I even forgot where I was. And when he said I was doing great, and he was right all along to believe in me, I decided that was it. I was going to have sex with him, and he wouldn’t even have to pay me. I thought sex was always something you paid for, but I would give it to him for free. 

Reminder: I was fifteen. But I had no concept of the fact that there was any problem with this, with my being fifteen and his being… forty or so, I didn’t really know. No-one ever told me it was a problem. Of course Mama told me not to go off with strangers; she didn’t elaborate. I guess everyone after assumed I knew. 

And he… well, he didn’t know how old I was. I guess I should have looked about twelve, with how tiny I was, but after all the fighting I was built like a tank -- just like I am now. No twelve-year-old looks like that. No fifteen-year-old looks like that, honestly. And the guards were always saying I was “too old to be this dumb” when they shit-talked me for not being able to read. So I don’t blame him for not knowing my age. 

I don’t blame him for anything, no matter how many times I’ve been told I should. I was the one who caused all of it to happen. He was having me copy some sentences, fucking innocent, and instead I wrote _I want you to fuck me_ \-- so smooth. He blushed, and I knew I had him. But he erased my sentence and said, “You don’t need to be embarrassed about saying that -- but you spelled it wrong.” And then he wrote out _I have to go to the bathroom_ , in big messy caps like that was what I’d actually written. 

And so that’s where I went. 

I don’t even think he was gay. I guess, when all you have on hand is men, something’s got to give. 

I waited for him. I don’t know how long I waited; it probably wasn’t that long, but it felt like forever. He came in, finally; he fucked me over a sink, used his own spit as lube. It was awful, but I loved it anyway. I couldn’t keep my goddamn mouth shut. He had to cover my mouth so no-one would hear me. And it worked until I came, and I bit him, and I screamed. 

He had guards on him before I could even pick my pants up. And that’s when I learned what “age of consent” means. It’s also when he learned I was fifteen. 

I didn’t want to go to court. I wanted nothing to do with the legal system at all. But I went to his trial anyway, because I knew that if I didn’t, he didn’t have a chance. I told them he didn’t know I was fifteen, if he’d known he wouldn’t have touched me -- the judge said I looked much younger than that, and I ended up taking off my shirt in the middle of the courtroom and screaming “Does a fifteen-year-old look like this?” and punching myself in the stomach. Didn’t matter. He’d already pleaded guilty, and I was just wasting my time. 

Between the time he had left at the correctional facility and the years they added for… Well, it added up to thirty years. But someone murdered him within the first few weeks he was in jail. You know, they really hate child molesters there. 

He. uh. He actually died on my sixteenth birthday. Stabbed through the heart with a screwdriver during Christmas dinner. I guess they told me because they thought I would feel better knowing I was “safe”, but he’d never made me feel unsafe. I just felt like I’d been the one that killed him. It was my fault he’d gone there anyway; if I’d never asked him to fuck me… 

All I did for the next two years was read. I read everything I could get my hands on, because I wanted to finish learning what he’d started to teach me. Worked up from fairy tales to self-help books to squeaky-clean novels to the terrifying math books -- just enough so that, first thing I did when I got out was get my GED. 

I didn’t even do that for myself. I did it because he said he thought I could go to college if I worked hard enough. 

So that’s where I’m at. I grew up in shit, I took advantage of an innocent man who wanted everything good for me, and somehow I’m here. I take it that wasn’t what you were expecting to hear. You didn’t sign up for this, did you? 

\---

“I understand if you want to leave,” Levi finished. 

Eren’s brows, long since furrowed, drew closer together. “Do you want me to?”

“Hell no, I don’t want you to leave. I’d do whatever it takes to keep you in my life. But you deserve to know my past, and if that’s not something you’re willing to deal with --”

“I’m not going to leave you because you told me you were _assaulted_.”

“That’s… not exactly what I was trying to get across.”

“I know what you think of it. You blame yourself. I get that. You… you think you assaulted him. But I don’t agree with you. He should have known better than to assume -- Jesus, you were still labelled a minor in that place, he should never have touched you no matter what age he thought you were.” Eren’s fists clenched in his lap. “I’d -- I’d kill him myself if he was still alive.” 

“Eren --”

“I would!” He locked eyes with Levi. “I love you, I want to protect you!” He suddenly looked away and stuttered. “I’d do it even if I didn’t love you. Even if I didn’t know you…” His fists clenched and unclenched, and then Eren crossed his arms, squeezing his hands between his elbows and his sides to stop them from moving. 

Levi gently pulled Eren’s arms back out and slid his hands into Eren’s. “Thank you,” He said quietly. “Even if I think it’s misplaced… I appreciate that you care so much. I don’t think of what he did as assault, though. I can’t. I wanted it, I asked for it. I knew exactly what I was asking for. He didn’t.”

“And maybe in a world where we didn’t put all this importance on sex and only doing it when you’re ready and making it special and being not a thing for kids to know anything about, that might make a difference. But that’s not the world we live in, and he should have known better.”

As much sense as that made… that _was_ the world Levi grew up in, as far as he knew at the time. He never understood sex to be anything shameful until after. But if that was the world that man lived in… maybe Eren had a point. He stared at Eren’s hands in his; his eyes caught on Eren’s tattoo, visible on his forearm below three-quarter length sleeves. 

_A memory… involving a knife…_

Levi’s hands involuntarily tightened. “You’ve done it before.”

Eren sucked in a breath. 

“You killed someone. For that.” He stared, awed, into Eren’s eyes -- the answer was there, plain for anyone to see. Fear. Fear of rejection. But also a determination, a confidence, a belief that he had done the right thing. For all the ways Eren had surprised him, Levi never would have expected him to be a killer. 

“Two. I killed two people.” Eren took another deep breath, steeling himself. This wasn’t anything he’d planned to say, but he wasn’t going to deny it. “For trying. For ruining a girl’s life and almost getting their nasty hands all over her; I didn’t let them get that far. There was a third -- their intended victim killed him.” 

“Oh,” Levi said. There wasn’t anything he could add, even if he hadn’t been shocked/awed into near silence. There was a sort of pride welling up within Levi, as well as a strange comfort, which he couldn’t quite put into words -- or, he could, but it would involve ascribing labels to people, a person, who he didn’t think deserved them, and so words failed him. 

“I was nine,” Eren added. 

“ _Oh._ ”

“My punishment was therapy.”

“Makes sense,” Levi said, somewhat wide-eyed. “You were young; they wouldn’t put you in jail. That’s… wow. Nine. Who did you save?” 

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“That’s fine.”

For a short while, they were silent, just sitting and contemplating with their hands entwined. But then Levi snorted, a sort of self-deprecating laugh. “We’re pretty fucked up, aren’t we?” 

Eren smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, and when he leaned sideways for a hug Levi welcomed him in. 

“You don’t have to force yourself to lighten the mood,” Eren said. “Just let it sink in a little. We’re not in any rush.” 

“Says you,” Levi mumbled, but he allowed Eren to snuggle in closer and fall into a contemplative silence. 

In truth, telling Eren all of this hadn’t made Levi feel any more at ease. He knew there were places where he hadn’t said enough, and times where he’d said much more than he needed to. The fact that Eren didn’t blame him made him wonder if he’d just flat-out said it all wrong. He just couldn’t see himself as that man’s victim. If he hadn’t wanted it, if even for a moment he’d had any doubts, he could have utterly destroyed that man, broken bones before anyone came to cart him away -- but he hadn’t. The scream that tore from his throat to alert the guards had been one of the purest ecstasy. Yet the look in his momentary lover’s eyes as he was pushed to the floor and handcuffed was one of utter confusion, then of realisation, panic, and finally his eyes had lifted to Levi and all they showed was the pain and anger of betrayal. And Levi, literally caught with his pants down, had felt ashamed before he even knew what he should be ashamed for. 

The fact that he was in the minors’ facility -- should that really be a strike against the man? The oldest “minor” there had been in his thirties; should he have been expected to assume Levi was untouchably young? Levi didn’t think so. 

“What was his name?” Eren asked. “Sorry, that’s a weird question.” 

“No, it’s…” Maybe it was weird. But Levi wanted to answer. “Rice. I always thought it was weird how his last name was food.” 

“Food…? Oh, _rice_. I thought it was Reiss, like Reiss Corporation.”

“Well, that’s what it was called.” 

“...” 

Levi could almost hear the gears turning in Eren’s brain. 

“It’s… that’s spelled R-E-I-S-S. Not R-I-C-E.”

“Oh. That’s weird.”

“I know his daughter.” 

Levi suddenly couldn’t breathe. “What?” he choked out. 

“Krista Renz. She’s a professor, and one of the Rocky Horror directors -- you should know her…”

“I do.” She was part of the 104-hour Armin Army. Of course Levi knew her. 

“Her last name used to be Reiss. She sort of combined it with Ymir’s last name when they got married, so it’s Renz now, and she changed her first name too…” Eren rambled slightly. “But… she used to be part of that Reiss family.”

Levi knew Rice -- Reiss had a daughter. He even _met_ her, very briefly, at the trial. He never forgot a face, and now with the connection made he knew they must be the same person; she could have aged no other way. Levi never could have imagined that the soul-piercing force of nature that was Historia Reiss would turn into the sweet woman with the simmering below-surface strength that was Krista Renz. 

Historia had come into the courtroom and glared at her father as long as he was within her sight. She’d admitted he was a kind father, had always been caring, didn’t ever seem to want any trouble, but she would never forgive him for this. She could only look back and see all the signs, as she said; Levi couldn’t see a single one. 

He wondered if the Krista of today would think the same. He couldn’t imagine it. 

Then again… there had been murder in her eyes, a need for justice at any cost, when she asked Levi what she could do to help Armin. Maybe she wasn’t as forgiving as she seemed. 

And Armin… even she had sided against Reiss when she found out. Of course it came with the caveat that maybe Levi shouldn’t have let Reiss think he was the wrong age, but with his whole situation in mind, she understood why he hadn’t thought there was anything wrong with that. Levi generally trusted Armin when it came to picking apart others’ choices and motivations -- it was what she was best at, in his opinion, and it impressed him. Maybe he should take all this a little more to heart. 

Still, it didn’t sit well with him. He couldn’t reconcile the guilt he felt with the idea that he might not be to blame. 

Had Eren gone through this, after killing two people? He seemed so sure of himself now, so certain that he’d done the right thing, even if he couldn’t speak of it, but there must have been a time when he questioned it. 

But then… Eren didn’t seem the type for regrets, or wavering resolve. He’d probably not even thought of it as murder; instead, he might have seen it more as disposing of garbage. It wasn’t out of cruelty -- it was his sense of justice. 

Or maybe Levi was reading into it too much. Maybe he was thinking too much. Wouldn’t it be nice to just… not think for a while… 

He reclined on the couch, and Eren repositioned himself a little more comfortably, but they still just lay there. Levi had to wonder at how completely okay he was with that -- the whole point of telling Eren this was because he didn’t feel right fucking him until Eren knew, but here he was, having said it, still really wanting to fuck Eren, but his brain was too full of churning emotion to even consider taking such action now. All he really wanted was a hug. 

Soon, he thought. _We’ll do it soon._

When Eren had his time to think -- 

When Levi had his time to think --

They’d finally get what they came here for, like a little cherry on top of everything else they’d shared since they first locked eyes in January.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’ve tried to find a number of ways to express the difficulty i’ve had in writing this chapter, its significance to me, and what i hoped to gain from putting it here, without giving away more information about my life than i’m entirely comfortable with. just know that it is significant to me, and in some ways very personal. levi's story is not my own, but a few things are adapted from my experiences. 
> 
> as for what i hope to gain from writing this, i’m not exactly sure. when i first outlined levi’s backstory, it was never with the intention of writing any of it out; it was just so i knew how to write how he acts now. the more i wrote of Orange, though, the more i realized how relevant it is, how much eren and armin needed to know about how he grew up, and how much i needed to write it - and therefore how much i had to share it. because if i need to write it, then there's someone that needs to read it too.


	40. Blondes Have More Funfetti

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Star Trek and cake, domesticity, a five-minute welcome party, and a clean but sad bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i ended up finishing a new installment of my other ongoing snk fic, in all of us, in time for levi’s birthday, even though i really wanted to write this one. i just wasn’t feeling it… anyway, happy new year, and i passed 200K last chapter holy fuck???
> 
> real-time fic writing progress updates now available on twitter @nq_what

“Let’s bake a cake,” were Annie’s first words to Armin upon letting her into the house. 

“Cake?”

“Unless you brought homework. You can do that. I’m going to make a cake, though.” 

“I… no, I finished my homework. I’ll help,” Armin agreed, and Annie pulled her by the arm through the house. “I’m not much of a baker, though.”

“That’s fine, neither am I.” Annie started pulling large tubs out of cabinets; one was labelled flour, another sugar, and then a jar filled with rainbow sprinkles. She grabbed eggs, butter, and milk out of the fridge. “I make a funfetti cake pretty much every Friday.” 

“Doesn’t that come in a box?” Armin asked. 

“Well, yes, but why get the box mix when we buy all the ingredients in bulk?” 

“Makes sense.” Armin put her bag down on the dining table. “What should I do to help?” She’d already known the house was one of two co-operative living spaces on campus, but she hadn’t quite prepared for how _homey_ it was. The space was clearly lived-in; there were magazines (and some crumbs) on the table, photos of past generations of inhabitants on the mantle over a bricked-up fireplace, and was that… a dining tray with a homoerotic drawing of Batman and Robin collaged to it? Okay. 

“Measure out six cups of gluten-free flour flour from that,” Annie said, pointing to the largest plastic tub with a metal measuring scoop. “This thing’s one cup. And put it in the big bowl up there,” she pointed again, towards a very large bowl on a very high shelf. 

“I can’t reach that,” Armin said. 

Annie looked at her for a moment, realised Armin wasn’t actually that much taller than her, then opened a drawer and grabbed a soup ladle. She reached up and hooked the scoopy part of it over the rim of the mixing bowl, then tipped it forward until it fell from the shelf and onto her waiting hand. She handed it to Armin. “In this bowl.” 

“Got it.” Armin started measuring out flour. “So why do you have the Batman and Robin dining tray?”

“Because this house is full of gay nerds.”

“Fair enough.”

“I, too, am a gay nerd.”

“I figured.” Between the rainbow striped bandana holding back her hair, and the vintage Star Trek t-shirt, it wasn’t hard to guess -- but Armin did already know besides. 

Annie continued having Armin measure the sugar, milk, and shortening, while she handled all the ingredients that came in smaller amounts. 

“The jimmies are homemade, by the way,” Annie said. 

“The what?”

“The jimmies.” She held up the jar of rainbow-coloured bits and shook it. “These.”

“I thought they were sprinkles.”

“They’re called jimmies.” 

“Is this one of those things where we’re from different places so we call them different things?” Annie had spent high school in Armin’s hometown, but before that she lived in Boston, and before _that_ she lived in some tiny town in New Mexico. 

“Yeah. They’re jimmies.” 

“If you say so. How did you make them?” 

“It’s basically just icing, and you pipe it out in really thin lines and let it dry.” She started to measure some out, but then thought better of it and handed Armin the whole jar. “Just sprinkle them in while I mix until you think it’s enough.”

“Mm-hm. Don’t you mean jimmy them in?”

“Armin I swear to God --”

Armin grinned, her smile so disarming that Annie stopped mid-sentence, completely taken aback. She flushed and smushed her palm into the side of Armin’s face, pushing her away. “Stop that.” 

“Pft!” Armin laughed. “Why are you blushing?”

“Are you -- why am _I_ blushing? Do you not notice anything that goes on around you?”

“Huh?”

“Armin, half your friends turn into tomatoes whenever you smile. It’s disgusting,” she said, with only about half her usual amount of venom. “Eren and Levi just so happen to be the lucky ones who got you to like them back.”

“Oh.” This was news to Armin. Somehow the first response she came up with was, “Don’t you have a girlfriend?” 

“Yeah, and we both agree you’re a pretty girl with a cute smile. Don’t hold that against me.” Annie poured her liquid bowl into the really huge bowl currently holding all the dry, powdery stuff. “Just shut up and do the-- the _sprinkles_.” 

Annie started mixing the dry and wet stuff together -- with a whisk, as the hand mixer was long in need of replacement and would be messy even if it did work -- while Armin slowly poured in sprinkles. Tension thicker than the lumpy batter permeated the air, until Armin said, “Thanks.” 

“Don’t mention it,” Annie mumbled. Armin felt somehow strengthened by the idea that she could turn the usually unflappable Annie over to fidgeting and blushing. 

They ended up with about half the jar of sprinkles in the cake batter, which was probably more than any recipe might suggest but it looked colourful and therefore excellent. The only cake pan large enough for all the batter was a deep bundt form, which Annie used every week because no-one else ever made cakes that big. 

“Now what?” Armin asked when the cake was in the oven, and the timer set. 

Annie shrugged. “Star Trek is on Netflix,” she suggested, mostly joking. 

“Sure. I’ve only seen the new movies.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. I thought it was weird they cast that Crumbly-guy as a character named Khan, but…”

“No -- well, yes, that was… weird, but I meant, you’re actually willing to watch it with me?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“I mean, if you don’t want to, we could do something else.”

“Annie. Let’s watch Star Trek.”

\---

_”Captain, you almost make me believe in luck.”_

_”Why, Mr. Spock, you almost make me believe in miracles.”_

“GAAAY,” Annie and Armin shouted in unison, and shoved popcorn into their already-open mouths. Such was the proper way to watch Star Trek, of course. Annie briefly considered making a drinking game of it -- a shot every time Kirk and Spock are gay, two every time anyone else is gay, finish your drink when Bones says “bisexual” -- but she valued her liver and was pretty sure Armin did too. 

The cake was long since out of the oven, and Annie’s housemates came through the kitchen every once in a while to cut a slice, but they didn’t even notice as they watched their show in Annie’s attic room. Annie picked out her favourite episodes rather than watching all the way through. The Original Series was pretty space-monster-of-the-week anyway, and it was more fun this way. She didn’t actually care much for this episode, besides those two lines near the end, but it was worth it for just that. 

As the credits rolled, Annie reached for her laptop. “Okay, now we’re going to skip ahead again and watch what’s widely considered to be one of the best, if not _the_ best Star Trek episode ever produced. Are you ready?”

“At your orders, Captain,” Armin said, and grinned. 

Annie laughed and switched to “The City On The Edge of Forever,” squeezing back in between Armin and the wall where she’d been before. Despite that to Armin’s knowledge Annie was all muscle, all over, she was actually pretty comfortable to lean against -- and she didn’t squirm like Eren did. 

It was an enormous change, Armin thought, to be around Annie when she was at home. She was comfortable here, in her bed, watching her favourite TV show, in a way she so rarely was any other time Armin was around her. It made Armin remember the fluidity of her posing with Hitch for her Anatomy for the Artist class; despite that she’d been completely naked, she seemed in her element then. Maybe not as loose with her emotions as now, but she meshed with Hitch so effortlessly. 

“You’re dating Hitch, right?” Armin asked during the opening theme. She was pretty sure that was the case, but she’d only ever heard it through other people. 

“Yeah. Why?”

Armin shrugged. “Just wondering. You’re kind of… uptight, except when you’re around her, and here. It’s almost like you’re a completely different person.” 

“Oh. Yeah.” She smiled and sank back into her pillows. “It kind of is like that, isn’t it?” 

At that point the theme ended and cut to the episode. Though Armin had a question mark in her head she didn’t have any idea what to ask, and anyway, it was time to be quiet and watch. 

Armin watched with interest for another few episodes, but about halfway through Annie’s picks from season two she felt a weight drop against her shoulder. She turned to see Armin fast asleep, her head tipped over at an awkward angle against Annie’s shoulder. Annie nudged her awake and gently helped her find a more comfortable position; she looked far too tired for Annie to have the heart to tell her to change clothes or move to the other bed. And anyway, she’d had a pretty rough week; even if she didn’t show it was affecting her, Annie knew it must still hurt. Annie shut her laptop, TV, and the lights and took the open bed that she’d made up with her spare sheets for the night. 

Under the covers, she turned on her phone and squinted against its harsh glare; eyes blurry, she thumbed out a text to Hitch. 

_She’s cute when she sleeps, too. Unfair._

_send pix_ , Hitch replied. 

_NO. That’s creepy._

_ok well give her a kiss from me when she wakes up_

Annie locked her phone and stuffed it beneath her pillow. She would _not_ , and Hitch knew it. “Fuck,” she mumbled into the pillow. “I’m so gay.”

It was weird, though -- Armin was perceptive, that was sort of her Thing, but they didn’t know each other that well and yet she’d seen right through Annie and it was unsettling, disarming even that someone could see through her so easily. Armin noticed how different she acted, noticed the situations that caused it… even understood, if only subconsciously, the _reason_ for it. Most people just wrote off her changes in personality as her being nerdy or in love, which was true, but also not the whole of it. 

She didn’t expect Armin to understand everything, and really, Armin didn’t. It was only subconscious, after all. But maybe someday, Annie might be okay with explaining it to her. 

Or maybe not. Maybe it would stay buried inside, her little secret that only Hitch and her therapist knew about. 

“Annie?” came a quiet murmur from across the room. 

“Yeah?”

“Thanks,” Armin mumbled, full of sleep recently had and quickly returning. 

“No problem,” Annie whispered back. 

\---

The Renz household was typically quiet, despite that its two human inhabitants were professors of theatre. Tonight was no exception. 

Ymir had cooked dinner, so Krista washed the dishes and then joined her on the couch. Ymir graded papers with the TV on low as white noise, and Krista sat sideways with her feet up and dragged her own grading folder off the coffee table. 

“Babe,” Ymir said. 

“What, hun?”

“Your feet smell.”

Krista rolled her eyes and nudged Ymir’s arm with a smelly foot. “So romantic.” She tucked her legs under herself and turned around so she was leaning against Ymir, her feet hanging off the arm of the couch. “Better?”

“Mm-hmm.”

By the time they next noticed the time it was well past midnight -- normal sleeping time for two professors who only ever had afternoon classes. Their cat had fallen asleep in the little space between Krista’s legs and the couch, and their dog was long since out on her side on the floor, one paw twitching slightly in the air. She had a dog bed, but rarely used it; apparently the carpet was more comfortable. 

Ymir yawned and put her folder aside. “I’ll finish the rest in the morning,” she said.

Krista stirred, having also fallen asleep at around the same time as the dog; her sudden movement scared the cat, who shot out of his hiding-hole like a bullet. “Aww, Pancake, I’m sorry.”

Pancake would not be consoled, and instead took up residence under the TV stand for the night. Through all this, the dog on the floor slept soundly. 

“Goodnight, Pancake. ‘Night, Horse.” Krista got off the couch slowly, wobbling a little as her legs had gone numb in her awkward position. 

“You okay?” Ymir asked. 

“Fine, legs just fell asleep.” Krista braced herself against the couch as she shuffled towards the stairs. “Okay, let’s do this…” She pushed away from the couch and her legs wobbled. 

Ymir sighed and picked Krista up, carrying her up to their bedroom. “You know, it’s okay to ask for help when you need it.”

Krista groaned. “I can deal with it fine most days!” 

“Mm-hmm, that’s why you’ve been sitting down during rehearsals. Are you going to be able to do the show?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” she asserted. “I told you, my legs just fell asleep.” 

Ymir sighed. Her wife’s legs had been “falling asleep” every other day since she was in her twenties, before Ymir even knew her, and it was only getting harder for Krista to accept as it became harder for her to ignore. “Babe, I know you don’t want to hear this, but --”

“I need to get it checked out. I _know_.” 

Gently, Ymir placed krista on the bed and helped her out of her clothes. “It may not seem serious to you, but it could be a spinal injury, or something degenerative…”

“I know. I just.” Krista flexed her feet, willing them to move properly again. “I just want to get through this show.” 

“Because it’s the last one?” Ymir asked. 

“Yeah.” 

They’d made the decision together. Every year, someone in the Rocky Horror cast got in trouble, and the wrongdoing was always somehow related to the play. The last three years, it’d been enough to involve the police, enough for arrests to be made. Clearly, the satire was going over people’s heads; the relevance to history didn’t make up for how outdated it was. So this would be the last performance officially run by the department. 

“Well,” Ymir said, “we started it, and we’re going to end it.”

“Remember the first tryouts?” Krista asked, as Ymir helped her into her nightshirt. 

“Yeah. We barely got enough to fill out the cast.” Ymir had still been a student then; Krista was only in her second year of teaching. It was when they’d met -- ten years would pass before they’d even think about dating, but that was when they met. Ymir wanted to do the show, wanted to star in it because she too looked like a man and dressed like a woman, if only in secret. And back then you could only put on a show if you had a member of staff directing. Krista was the only professor who didn’t turn up her nose at the thought. 

“Twenty-five years later it’s more popular than it’s ever been.”

“It did the job it was meant to do,” Ymir said. “We can find another show to do what we need now.” 

“We could put a suggestion box at the show.”

“Mm-hmm. We should probably announce it.”

“Let’s wait until Thursday to tell the cast,” Krista said. “I don’t want to make them sad while we’re still practicing.” 

Ymir nodded. “Let’s bring them a cake or something.” 

“Yeah.” Krista laid down and shuffled under the blankets. “Oh, did Armin tell you anything? I haven’t checked my email.”

“Neither have I.” Ymir checked her phone before slipping into bed. She smiled. “Yeah. She’s in.” 

“That’s great!”

Ymir locked her phone and set it on the nightstand. When she turned back around she was still smiling. 

“You’re really excited, aren’t you?”

Ymir nodded. “In twenty-five years it’s still only ever been me. I’ve always been the only trans woman in the Wall Rocky Horror show.” 

“That you know of.”

“And if they were going to tell anyone, it would’ve been me.” 

“How would they know?”

Ymir raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t always look like this, remember?”

“I remember.” Krista giggled, recalling Ymir on her first day of teaching; she’d looked almost exactly as she had on the day of her graduation from Wall six years earlier, but with longer hair straightened to fall over her shoulders, and a blouse that buttoned the other way. “You were still beautiful.”

“Come on, don’t lie to me.”

“You were! I thought you were adorable.” 

“Okay, I can believe that. You _did_ blush and trip over yourself when you saw me.” 

Krista groaned. “That’s not fair! I was having a bad leg day.” 

“Aww, babe.” Ymir pulled her wife close to cuddle her. “I’m sorry.” 

“Mm-hmm. Jerk.” Krista got her head under Ymir’s chin and pressed her nose to Ymir’s neck. 

“Fuck!” Ymir jumped back. “That was cold!”

Krista grinned. “Got you back.” 

\---

In the morning, Armin and Annie left the house far earlier than either of them would normally be awake and took a trip to the college art museum. Eren, looking dishevelled and sleepy, sat at the front desk as he did every Saturday morning, trying to be subtle about how he was texting behind the counter. 

“G’morning!” he said when he noticed there were, for once, visitors. “Oh! Hi.”

“Morning, Eren,” Armin greeted; Annie just gave him a nod, as she was mid-yawn. “How’d it go?”

Eren’s face went through a number of different expression before settling on raised eyebrows, wide eyes, chewing his lip. “Good,” he said after a few moments. “We talked. I, uh, I get why it took him so long to tell me.” 

“That’s good.” 

“I’m… really glad he trusted me with that.”

Armin smiled, glad it was resolved -- though Eren still looked a little… hesitant? Unsure? Something open-ended, like there was more yet to be said. 

He sighed, only making that incompleteness stronger, and reached for the roll of entry stickers. “You here for the art or just me?” he asked. 

“Art,” Annie said, and reached for a sticker. She headed off to put her jacket and bag in a coatroom locker, leaving Armin and Eren to talk. 

“We’re here for you too. You look… Incomplete,” Armin said. It was the best way she could articulate it. 

Eren tilted his head back and forth, considering it. “I guess so. It’s just… it’s a big deal, and I didn’t want to have to leave him this morning. But I also… well, I had to; I have work. But I think we kind of need the time apart just to digest, or whatever. Not a long time; I’m probably going back there after work, if you want to join me.”

“I’ll be at rehearsal,” Armin said.

Eren smiled. “So you took the part.”

She nodded. “I hope you’ll come see the show.”

“Of course! I’ll even bring flowers.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Too late!” Eren grinned. “I’ve already decided. You won’t change my mind.”

“I’m not going to stop you, but you don’t have to.” Armin leaned across the counter and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.” 

“What for?”

“I don’t have time to list it; practice is in two hours.”

“Gross,” Annie said when she came out of the coat room, but her eyes, at least, were smiling. 

Eren reached for Armin’s hand before she went off into the museum. “If you want to come by after rehearsal --”

“I have homework,” Armin said. “Have fun with him, okay?” 

“You sure?”

“Eren. Have fun with our boyfriend. Love you.” 

“Love you, too.” _Our boyfriend_. God, that was nice to hear. 

Armin and Annie headed off into the first-floor temporary exhibition; it had just gone up in the last few days. Eren expected they’d like it; the work was a mix of drawings, lenses, mirrors, and pebble arrangements that Eren found befuddling as much as it was beautiful. 

Just then, Eren’s phone buzzed with a text from Levi. 

_Sorry I took so long to respond hanji called me. When are you coming over?_

_my shift ends at noon, but i have hw to do. hows 4?_ After a moment Eren added, _what did hanji call about?_

_They wanted to go to some bar tonight with me and petra. 4 is good._

After some deliberation, Eren said, _you should go. you dont get to see them alot, do you?_

Levi didn’t respond for a while, and Eren wondered if what he’d said had upset him. But then Levi said _Ok. See you tomorrow maybe?_ and he breathed a sigh of relief. 

_tomorrow_ , Eren confirmed. _i love you,_ he added, and when Levi sent a _Love you too_ back without even a short insult after, it made him smile. 

\---

The stage was dark when Armin and Annie first got there, but a bit of shuffling and a giggle welcomed them in before the lights came on, revealing the Rocky Horror cast and most of the crew, all in some sort of costume and posing in the most ridiculous fashion possible -- which wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but practice hadn’t started yet and they were already posing like it was the end of a big dance number. All at once they shouted, “HEEEEEEEY ARMIN!” 

Armin backed up so fast she almost knocked over Annie, who was still holding the door open behind her and smirking. She had, of course, been the one to let the rest of the cast know they were on their way, and to get ready. Now, she let the door shut and scooped up Armin into her arms, carrying her across the stage. 

“What are you doing?!” Armin shouted, laughing and clinging to Annie for dear life. 

“Welcoming you,” Annie said. She lifted Armin a little higher, and Armin shrieked. 

“Here, let me --” Reiner said, and he picked up Armin out of Annie’s arms, maneuvering her until she was seated neatly on Bertholdt’s shoulders, the highest seat in the room. 

“Oh my god, why?” Armin clung to Bertholdt’s head, looking almost as nervous at her high and potentially unstable perch as Bertholdt looked about _being_ that perch; he wasn’t exactly the most coordinated of people. 

“Because we have five minutes until practice starts,” Mikasa said, “and we want to take every last second of freedom we can get.”

Those five minutes consisted mainly of Bertholdt standing still as a statue while everyone else paraded around, singing Armin’s praises (literally singing snippets of pop songs riddled with compliments) up at her, until Krista called it to a halt. 

“Armin, over here,” Krista said when Armin was back on the ground, waving a bright blue corset in the air. “It’s one of mine,” she explained to Armin. “We don’t have time for you to get one of your own, but we’re about the same size, so it should work for you. You brought heels?”

Armin nodded, still a little dizzy from having been so high up. “Do I need to dance?”

“If you want to, I’m sure Ymir has something, but generally we don’t have our Usherette dance.” Krista then helped her get the corset on over her shirt. “You’ll do the deflowering ceremony, and then the opening song, and then you’ll sit on the side of the stage, opposite the narrator, for the rest of the show and lead callbacks.” 

“Okay. What’s the deflowering ceremony?” The front snaps of the corset were all in place, so Armin started to untuck her shirt from it. 

“At the beginning of the show, you’ll ask who’s never been to a live Rocky Horror Show, and pick a few people to bring onstage, and have them do something embarrassing.”

“Oh, like fake an orgasm? I know about that.” She got her shirt off, and Krista started pulling at the laces in back. 

Krista shrugged. “That’s one option. There’s a few others; deepthroating a banana, having two people try to pop a balloon by squeezing it between their bodies… it’s pretty much always something that’s in some way sexual. If you’re not comfortable with that, you can pick something else --”

“No, I like the orgasm thing.” If Armin had to do it, she was going to make other people do it too. 

Krista’s lips twisted and trembled until she couldn’t hold it in anymore -- she laughed so loud and suddenly that someone who’d just gone up to the catwalks tripped, letting out a loud clang as his clipboard of lighting cues fell to the metal walk. A pause, as it bounced and fell further, and then it clattered against the stage. Krista just laughed harder. 

“What’s so funny?”

“You surprised me,” Krista said. “I didn’t expect you to be so calm about it.”

“Why not? I mean, I know what the play is about.”

“Yes, but still, most of our actors are a little more awkward about talking about sex with a couple of professors.” 

Armin shrugged. She didn’t want to _say_ that was perfectly normal for her, but it was… 

“But then, you are close to Levi.” 

“Yeah…” She also wasn’t sure if Krista knew exactly how close they were. She wasn’t going to bring it up though. “That’s kind of tight,” she said to Krista, who was still pulling at the laces. 

“Take a deep breath,” Krista instructed. Armin breathed in; it was a little uncomfortable, but she was pretty sure she could completely fill her lungs. “Good?”

“Yeah, I can breathe.”

“Alright. I’ll tie it here. It should start feeling more comfortable when you start moving around; let me know if it hurts or your fingers start feeling tingly.” 

“Okay.” 

“You’re going to mostly be practicing with me, since you don’t have any choreography and everyone else is running through the show by lottery,” Krista said. She looked over Armin’s shoulder and frowned. “Or, maybe not. Ymir’s asking for you.” 

Armin turned; sure enough, Ymir was beckoning her over. 

“Turn around,” Ymir said when Armin reached her. She tugged on Armin’s laces. “Oh, she did change the lacing.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll put it this way,” Ymir said, “you and I are going to lace our corsets a little different from everyone else. I taught Krista how to do it so she could tie mine, and she remembered to do it for you.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Let me see the front.” 

Armin turned again. 

“Hm. I can show you how to make cleavage later if you want.”

Armin’s eyes went wide. “Uhhh.” Not something she was ever expecting to hear, but very much welcome nonetheless, so much so that her brain short-circuited for a moment. 

“Not required. Just, if you want to.” 

“S-sure,” Armin stammered. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Ymir waved her off. “Go sing.”

\---

Eren hadn’t been back to his dorm room for more than a few minutes at a time since the previous week, but he had so much free time now that he wouldn’t be with Levi as planned. He’d substituted for two last-minute evening shifts in the museum after he finished his homework, and so ended up being in the building the whole day, but there was nothing left to do after closing so he thought he might as well stop by the room he used to call home. 

It looked exactly as he and Armin had left it, complete with the curtains drawn; the Tyvek on the outside of the building supplied a clear message that the window still sported huge red hurtful letters, so he wasn’t about to open the curtains to the darkened street. His laundry basket was still overflowing from before his birthday, so he hefted it up and brought it down the hall to wash its contents. 

While the clothes were in the wash, Eren tried to tidy up a bit. Cleaning had never been one of his talents, but in the past week of living with Levi he’d picked up the habit by necessity. He stripped the sheets off his bed and replaced them with a spare set, even though he didn’t expect to be sleeping there for a while; he did Armin’s as well, and put both of their sheets in another wash cycle. He cleared off his desk, took out the trash, put some art supplies that were sitting around in a bag to bring to the studio. Three pairs of shoes were strewn across the floor, so he put them away, and then figured he may as well organise his bookshelf and clear some of the crap from it. 

It kind of depressed him, cleaning a room that was his but which he wasn’t living in. It was basically a storage space at this point, and it seemed like it would remain that way until he and Armin moved out at the end of the year. He wouldn’t live here without her, and she, understandably, did not feel safe in a room where the window still bore a wish for her death. 

Eren moved the laundry into a dryer, and then returned to his room to heave a great sigh and flop down on his bed. He’d only meant to be here for a few minutes, and here he was doing laundry and cleaning up and making himself sad because he was doing all this work for a room that didn’t even feel like it belonged to him. 

“What do I even do now?” Eren mumbled to himself. There wasn’t even that much to clean in the first place; they were only first-years, so they hadn’t brought that much stuff to fall to disarray. He rolled over onto his back. “I could jerk off?” he mused; it was as good a way to waste time as any. But then he realised he’d probably just make himself sad again, because he’d either be thinking about Levi, who he missed, or Armin who he missed as well and who also was trying so hard to make it seem like she wasn’t bothered by how unsafe Wall still was for her. The school paper had run their article on the “104-hour Guard” but the truth was, the twelve of them were still doing the same job, albeit a bit less organised, and Armin was still afraid to be on campus more than was absolutely necessary. 

Levi was just… too fucking gracious, letting them into his home, expecting nothing in return, and Eren knew that he had some sort of charge for long-term guests in his apartment but Levi wouldn’t even let Eren bring it up, much less suggest they had to make up the cost somehow. He seemed to honestly want them there. 

And Armin seemed to enjoy living with Levi too, even despite the forced displacement that caused it. Somehow waking up with Eren and Levi on either side of her every morning caused her to smile, in a little haven of love before it was time to greet the day and the stress that came with it, and going to sleep the same way meant her dreams were calm even in the middle of a storm. 

They couldn’t keep this up forever though; it was way too soon for them all to be moving in together, for one, and for another… Eren and Armin were _college students_. They shouldn’t have to be afraid of _their own college_. 

As for Eren, he wanted to be around Levi and Armin as much as possible. He loved them, so why wouldn’t he? But he also wanted to be able to see his friends, and he was sure they did too. Armin had Rocky Horror, for now, but they would open in a week and the show only ran three days, and then it would be over. What then? 

That was why Eren had supported her decision to join the cast, and pushed Levi to see his friends tonight. He knew it had to be a lot for Armin, carrying the weight of the world’s disrespect on her shoulders, and for Levi, taking care of two barely-adults in between teaching and painting and all the other things Levi usually did, and it wasn’t like Levi normally spent a lot of time around friends. 

_Maybe I should just go back to Levi’s and wait for him,_ Eren thought. He could perhaps get something to cook on the way there, make sure everyone had a nice meal to come back to… No sooner had that crossed his mind, though, than his mouth opened in a wide yawn. 

_Gotta stay here until the laundry is done. Maybe I’ll just take a nap…_

When Eren awoke, it was light out once again, and his phone was ringing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the artist whose work i briefly described in this chapter is mary bauermeister. her art was actually on exhibition at the smith college museum of art in spring 2015, not 2014 when this fic takes place, but i really love her work so i’m using it here anyway.


	41. Welcome To My Swamp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad decisions, followed by gay stuff. (Bi stuff?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: alcohol, alcohol-related questionable decisions and memory loss, explicit sexual content (no alcohol is involved in the sex).

"You know what? I'm gonna do it."

Petra gave Levi a confused look, and he was pretty sure it was only about half the fault of the alcohol in his system that she didn’t understand him. "Do what?"

"Erennnnn," Levi slurred. He slouched forward onto the bar, not noticing how halfway-through-the-night sticky it was as much as when he first got here. "Fuck, can't you keep up?" 

Hanji elbowed him, none-too-gently. “Don’t be fucking rude.” 

"Sorry," he said mechanically. He wasn't that sorry -- he didn’t really have it in him to be sorry after a few drinks -- and he was pretty sure neither Petra nor Hanji were actually all that mad. "Weren't you waiting for this?"

"Yeah," Hanji said, "and that's why we're not surprised. When did you decide?"

"Mm, what time is it?"

"Five to midnight," Petra offered, as the only one sober enough to make sense of clocks. 

"About. Um. Ten, I think ten hours ago." His math faculties were also impaired by drink, and they weren’t very good to start with. He’d been painting Eren’s left boob at the time, he was pretty sure, and texting him, and that was sometime around one or two when they stopped texting and he thought _yeah, it’s time_. Levi leaned more heavily against the bar counter, then decided he might as well slump forward and lay on his arms. He finally noticed that the counter was sticky against his skin when his face made contact with the polished wood. _Gross._ He considered moving, but didn't. "He said he loves me a few weeks ago. Or a week ago. I don’t know. And it just clicked. And then I told him some shit even you don’t know about me, and he still loves me. Also, 'm done grading. The shit-for-brains, entitled douche in Senior Projects put in even _less_ effort this time. But, to hell with him. I don't give a shit. And did I tell you my show is actually next year? I did tell you, didn’t I? Painting him now. Eren, I mean. Gonna tell Eren tomorrow, 's long as he doesn't take any of my classes, I'll gladly fuck him."

Petra and Hanji exchanged a look over Levi's head as he continued talking. When Levi got to rambling, it was time to cut him off. 

"Hey, Levi?" Petra put a hand on his shoulder, cutting him off. "Let's go dance."

"I'm gay."

"You're not, and I wasn't asking to sleep with you anyway."

"Right. I have a girlfriend too.” He blinked a few times, as if his drunken brain was still not used to the idea that he had two significant others. “This music is shitty."

Petra rolled her eyes. "So is your attitude. Come on." She and Hanji each grabbed an arm and hauled him off his barstool. 

From then on, the night passed in a blur. Levi danced a while, might have drunk more, got separated from Hanji and Petra, and also apparently from his shirt -- and beyond that, there was nothing. 

The next thing he was aware of was a headache and a cold tile floor. _Did I fucking pass out in my kitchen again?_ he thought. But no -- there was only a very light smell of Lysol, not the overpowering scent that usually attacked him when he woke up hungover in the wrong room of his apartment. Instead, the floor smelled mostly of paint thinner and collegiate despair. Levi opened his eyes; from his blurry and limited point of view, he could make out the corner of a desk, a drying rack, and a Swiffer. 

_My office, then._

He sat up, thankful for the closed curtains and the switched-off lights. His head still spun, but at least there wasn't the stabbing pain of bright lights if he kept his eyes only open in a squint. He held a hand up to his head. 

"Ugh." He smelled horrible. Alcohol, sweat, dirt... bleach? And another smell he couldn't quite identify, but it reminded him of spray-paint. Something with aerosol in it… _Ugh, fuck, I didn’t do a mural again, did I?_

He tried to stretch, and that was when he noticed he was naked. The feeling of his bare ass sliding on the floor of his office made his heart sink. _Shit. Where the fuck are my clothes?_

He spared a look at the door -- it was locked. Small miracles. He moved around a bit; his muscles were sore, but not any muscles that made him worry he’d done something particularly worrisome while drunk (meaning, his ass wasn’t sore). Then he turned his attention to searching for his clothes. 

There was a shirt thrown over the back of his chair. It was light blue, and therefore wasn't his, and it disgusted him to put on a random shirt, but he slipped his arms through the sleeves and buttoned it up anyway. It ended up being several sizes too large for him, and hung mid-way to his thighs. No pants or underwear turned up, and that worried Levi even more. _Did I come here naked? Did anyone see me?_ It wasn't that nudity, even public nudity, bothered him. He’d done it a fair amount when he was a student. He just didn't really want to deal with getting yelled at by the department head for streaking through the art building in the middle of the night while he was hungover at this age. _Did anything happen to me?_

Finally, he glanced at the clock. Fucking one in the afternoon. He’d missed his run, he’d missed half the day, and he’d be getting a late start painting, if he even ended up doing anything that day. At least it was a Sunday, and he didn't have any classes. 

He looked away, but then something registered belatedly in his pounding head. He looked back at the face of the clock in horror, hoping he'd just imagined what he saw. But no -- his reflection in the warped but mirrored clock face stared back at him with the worst revelation of the morning. 

Blond. He was blond. 

Motherfucker. 

And-- _And_ \--

 _Orange!_ He was orange. His fucking _skin_ was fucking _orange_ with shitty spray-tan. 

There weren't curses strong enough. 

Levi honestly considered running across campus to the science quad, clad only in a huge button-down, and putting himself through one of the hallway chemical showers. Fifty gallons of high-pressure water had to be enough to get rid of at least one layer of skin. But, of course, then he'd be _seen_ , and if he'd fallen asleep with the spray still on him, it had already done more than enough damage. If he looked like a rotting carrot like this, with the uneven brown-orange spray all over him, then rinsing it off would turn him into a fucking tangerine. 

“I am never drinking again,” he mumbled. He realised this was far too late in coming; he’d sworn off every other mind-altering substance years ago, and should have known he’d fuck up with the only one he had left, too. 

He sat back down on the floor before he could collapse. His head felt like it was about to split open, his skin was grimy and probably covered in actual dirt both beneath and on top of the fake tan, his hair -- now that he noticed it had been bleached, and had the bleach even been washed out? -- felt dry and sticky. He reached up to touch it again, and it crunched, and yeah, the bleach was probably still there. He curled up, wrapping his arms around his knees and resting his head on them, cringing as his hair crunched again. 

He considered calling Petra -- but no. Petra may have been the designated driver, but Levi couldn't wake her on her day off, whether she had a hangover or not. Also, Petra would probably take pictures of him for blackmail purposes. Or just for her own amusement. Sure, they were friends, and she cared about him, but she also loved knocking him down a peg when she could. 

And Hanji was also out of the question -- they would be at least as hungover as Levi was. 

He didn't want to call Erwin. But he had to call Erwin. 

Levi's phone was, miraculously, still around. It was on the seat of his lumpy office chair, and when he turned the screen on, it boasted a whopping 4% battery. It would do for one call. 

He held the phone up to his mouth, and Siri automatically beeped at him. "Call Erwin," he said, and then he held the phone about half a foot from his ear. His voice was hoarse -- no surprise there. 

The call connected, and Levi made a face at the ringing noise. 

"Levi?"

_No. No. Fuck no. Shit._

Eren groaned on the other end of the line. Levi heard shuffling, as if he was getting out of bed. "I was asleep. What’s up?" 

"Sorry," Levi mumbled, "wrong number." He meant to hang up, but--

"Are you drunk?" Eren’s voice was soft and full of concern, as much as it was full of sleep. 

"No. Hungover. Meant to call Erwin. Bye."

"Wait!" Eren shouted. Levi flinched. "Where are you?" Eren sounded so worried, bless him. 

"In my office. Listen, I don't have a lot of battery left, I need to call Erwin--"

"I'll come get you."

"Eren, no."

"Be there in five!" 

"Wait!" Levi shouted. He cringed at his own voice; another stab of pain cracked through his skull. It took every ounce of willpower he had not to whimper at it. That would have been pathetic. 

"What?"

"I can't believe I'm asking this, but. Could you bring some pants?" There was only silence on the other line, and Levi added, "And maybe a mask?"

"What the _fuck_."

"Don't ask. You'll find out soon enough." 

Levi hung up on Eren and resumed his previous position, curled up on the floor. 

\---

True to his word, Eren came with pants, though it took him about ten minutes. He also had a sweatshirt, for some reason, and a knitted hat. "It was the closest thing I could find," he explained through the door. "Now can you open up? I've already seen you naked."

"It's not my dick I'm worried about." Truthfully, he _was_ a little worried about his dick; for one, he was pretty sure spray-on tan wasn't supposed to go there, and for another, he was pretty sure Eren wouldn't want his dick anymore once he found out Levi had turned his new least favourite colour since the last time they'd seen each other. "Hey, Eren?" Levi cursed his voice for betraying his nervousness. 

"Yeah."

"Would you still want my dick if I looked different?"

"Oh my God, did someone hurt you?” Eren asked through the door. “Do you need to go to the hospital?"

"No! Well. I don't think I'm hurt. Only thing that hurts is my head." 

At least he’d called Erwin, after remembering he had a spare phone charger in his desk, and gotten confirmation that the man had found him about ten minutes after Hanji and Petra had lost track of him, in the next bar over, stripping for tips. Erwin had given Levi his own shirt and tried to take him back to his apartment, but Levi refused to go anywhere other than his office. Erwin, tired and exasperated, had left him there -- and apparently, he hadn’t noticed the spray tan and slowly bleaching hair in the dark. How Levi managed to get up to that much in ten minutes, he would never know. 

Levi took a deep breath. "So, that play your friends are in."

"Rocky Horror."

"Yeah, that. What's that line... _I've been making a man..._ "

" _With blond hair and a tan._ Oh, shit, don't tell me--"

Levi took a deep breath and opened the door, just enough to grab Eren by his shirt collar and pull him through. 

Eren stumbled and nearly toppled over, but his eyes fixed immediately on Levi. "What happened to you?"

"I don't know, but it's starting to itch. And I mean physically itch, not just itch the way my skin usually crawls when I haven't showered in a day and a half. I'll wash your pants for you, by the way, unless you want them orange inside." Levi snatched the jeans from Eren; they'd be a little baggy and a few inches too long, but at least they'd cover his ass. 

"Levi..."

"Listen, if your dick has decided to crawl inside your body never to come back out again, you don’t need to tell me. I understand. I think I look hideous too. Spare me the pity party. I just want to get home and take about four showers."

"My dick hasn't _crawled back into my body_ , Levi. Do you really think I'm that shallow? Sure, I _noticed_ you because you're hot as hell, but I actually like you as a person, too. You could turn into an ogre and I wouldn't even complain about the smell."

"So you think I look like an ogre. Great." Levi was too tired to deal with this. He just wanted to go _home_ … 

"No!” Eren took him by the shoulders. “Fuck, no, Levi, I think you look tired and hung-over and pissed off and like you really need a hug and a few Advil, but you're still--"

"Don't you even think of lying to me right now." Levi glared at Eren. This was a glare he reserved for very few cases, very extreme cases -- and Levi really, particularly didn't like being lied to. 

"You're still hot," Eren insisted. "I'd fuck you right now if I wasn't more concerned with getting you into a shower as soon as possible before your skin falls off." Eren fitted his hat over Levi's head, pulling it low over his eyes; there was a quiet crunch as the stiff, dry, caked-on bleach underneath cracked. "D'you want me to take you to your place, or do you want to try and shower in my dorm?"

"My place. Please." Erwin would be there soon with a spare key -- and then Levi would have to change the lock, because his own had vanished. There went the random annoying visits from his ex-roommates. He’d always complained about it before, but now he sort of felt sad to see that disruption go. “Stay with me,” Levi requested; even if Eren was going to leave him after this, and Levi was still convinced he was, he wanted this last moment of feeling loved. 

Eren put an arm around his shoulders and led him out of the building. 

\---

Levi scrubbed at his skin for over an hour, he was sure. He used up the remaining half of a bar of soap and completely ruined his loofah trying to get rid of the spray tan and all the dried sweat that was mixed in with it. He rinsed his hair over and over, then shampooed it four times, trying not to notice how much of it fell out in clumps. He put conditioner in what was left, as if it would even make a difference; his hair was too thin to hold up against that much bleach. 

He didn't cry. But he came pretty close. 

Though Levi didn't consider himself a vain person, at least not beyond a few jokes, he knew how he looked, and he knew how others saw him. He liked looking good -- didn't everyone? He liked his dark, shiny hair, and he liked the haircut because it framed his face well and kept his eyes in a menacing shadow. Now, his hair ranged from light brown, to bright yellow, to nearly white and pasta-textured, in patches and strands, and he'd probably just lost about half of it. He'd never put much thought into his pale skin, really; the only other option for him had always been bright pink, as he sunburned easily. But even pink would have been preferable to the blotchy, unnatural orange he was left with. He couldn’t even see the faint freckles on his nose and shoulders anymore; he’d never thought he would miss them so much. 

When he finally stepped out of the shower, having scrubbed his skin so raw it looked almost scarlet, he stood in the middle of his tiny bathroom and breathed heavily around the lump in his throat. The mirror was completely fogged over, but he stood there for many long minutes, until it cleared. He chanced a look at himself. 

He was still very much so orange. His hair had thinned out considerably as well, and he took the two steps to his sink and grabbed the hair clippers. In a frenzied rush, he buzzed the remaining strands of hair off his head, and then stared at them as they lay in the sink. 

There was a knock on the bathroom door. "Levi?"

Eren had waited for him. Why? 

"Levi, you okay in there?"

"I'm fine." He was not fine. 

"Can I come in?"

"Yeah, go ahead."

The door opened slowly, and Eren sighed. "I had a feeling you'd cut it."

"Half the hair fell out because the bleach was in so long. This looks better, trust me." It felt awful though. The bleach had burned his scalp in some places, and it stung. 

Eren hesitated before pointing out, "It's the only part of you that's not orange, though."

Levi hadn't thought of that. His scalp was still pale, with patchy pink burns, barely covered by the fuzz left over from his clippers. "I'll wear hats. How long does spray tan take to fade, do you know?"

"A week or so, I think. Well, if you leave it on for the right amount of time. Might last longer since you had it on for so long."

"Fuck." Levi’s hands gripped the lip of the sink. It startled him that the knuckles didn’t ever change colours. 

"I have a question for you." Eren shifted from side-to-side a few times. "You asked if I'd still want you. Why?"

"Doesn't really matter now, but it seemed like you were… I don’t know, distant. You left yesterday, and I get it, you had work, but then you told me to go out with Hanji and Petra even though you were supposed to come over. Kind of already felt like you were leaving. And now I’m ugly as sin, so.”

"What do you mean? I still want you. I already told you, I love you, and I still think you’re hot. And I. I’m sorry.” He paused. “I wasn’t trying to be distant -- I thought maybe we needed a little space to, well, process what you told me."

“I thought you said it was okay.”

“And it is okay. I just didn’t want to rush into sex after something so. Um. Big.”

Levi rolled his eyes. "I told you, save the pity party for someone who gives a shit. You didn't have to wait around for me, you know. You can go home."

"I was actually… Well, I’ll go if you want me to, but. Since you mentioned it, I was hoping there might be a chance we could do it now."

“Do what?” Break up? Jesus, just dump it all on Levi at once. Or course. The other shoe always has to drop, right? 

“Sex.” When Levi didn’t respond at first, Eren repeated it. “Levi, I want to have sex with you. I have this whole time, so if you’re ready, I am too.”

Levi turned to face Eren, finally realising Eren wasn’t just making it all up, wasn’t about to leave him. "You're not kidding, are you..."

"Nope. I even asked Armin if it was okay." Eren put his hands on Levi's shoulders. "Can we do this, now?"

Levi hesitated, because he still wasn’t sure he could believe this, but when Eren didn’t move away, didn’t stop smiling that insufferable, hopeful smile, he nodded once and closed his eyes as Eren immediately came in for a kiss. Their tongues intertwined without question, and Eren pushed Levi back against the bathroom counter (somehow they always ended up with such surfaces). Levi pushed back, not stopping until they were out the door and in his bedroom. He shoved Eren, smirking just slightly as he tripped onto the mattress where it lay on a low platform that served as a bed frame. Eren gave a shout -- it was a longer fall than he'd expected, no matter how many times he’d already slept in this bed. 

"You ever taken it up the ass before?" Levi asked. Eren shook his head. "Then you can next time." Levi dropped onto the bed, his knees on either side of Eren's thighs, and reached past him to grab his lube from the nightstand. He threw a condom at Eren’s face. 

Levi wasted no time -- he shoved two fingers into himself as soon as they were slick. Some part of Levi still worried Eren was going to realise he really had become too ugly to fuck. "Strip for me."

Eren complied immediately, stripping off his shirt in one motion. He grabbed Levi's hips and pulled him close. He pressed his lips to Levi's chest, then licked him. "You taste like soap."

"I taste like _clean_. Hn..." Levi didn't bother with getting his fingers in deep, just on stretching himself. It wasn't exactly the most fun part of sex for him, and he'd rather just get on Eren's dick as soon as possible, at least this time. "Hurry up and get your pants off, I'm almost ready."

"You know, I thought you'd be more of the teasing type," Eren said. He squirmed out of his jeans and kicked them off onto the floor, followed by his underwear, and the empty wrapper as he put the condom on. 

"We've been teasing each other for months. I want you to fuck me right now." As if to punctuate this, Levi pulled his fingers out of his ass and pushed Eren down with both hands. He put a little more lube on his hand and stroked Eren's dick until he was fully hard, then settled himself over Eren's hips. 

Eren laughed as Levi lined himself up. "I'm about to fuck a professor. This doesn't even happen in porn. The student is always the one getting fucked."

"Damn shame, that is. AH!" Levi dropped himself down completely as soon as he'd taken in an inch, and it burned a little while he got used to the stretch; he'd been hasty in his preparation, and two fingers were really never enough anyway. “F-fuck. Those. Those actors never know what they’re missing.” 

He didn't mind the pain so much, though. It hurt, but it also felt _fantastic_. Levi lifted himself up once and dropped down again, throwing his head back. He tensed his legs, preparing to move again, but Eren sat up quickly, throwing his arms around Levi and flipping their positions. 

"Motherfucker!" Levi swore. "You better ram your dick into me twice as hard as I was going to if you want to do it this way."

"No promises." Eren lifted Levi's legs off the bed, hooking one over his shoulder and holding the other at his waist. He pulled out slowly, then slammed back in, throwing his whole body forward. Levi gasped and grabbed at the blanket. "That hard enough?"

"Don't stop!" Levi whined, his entire body shaking. He saw stars on his tightly shut eyelids. 

Eren did it again, and again, and again; the pace was slower than he'd like have liked, but if that was what it took to put enough force into his thrusts that Levi started screaming his name then he was just fine with it. 

"Eren! _Eren!_ " Levi was twisting his fingers into the blanket, and he let go with one and grabbed onto Eren's arm, digging his nails in. "Ah, fuck, Eren!"

"Levi..." Eren whispered. He thought he was probably a little more clear-minded than Levi at this point, but he also realised he was already about ten seconds away from coming. "I- I- Ah!" Levi squeezed around Eren -- _Probably on purpose_ , Eren thought -- and Eren went completely still. His orgasm came over him like a wave, and his breath caught in his throat as he spilled inside Levi. He made a tiny, high-pitched noise that he kind of hoped Levi didn't hear. 

"Fuck, fuck, I--" Levi started to complain that Eren had stopped (as if he hadn't tried his very best to get Eren to come before he did) but was cut off when Eren thrust into him again. It was far weaker than before, but he was still hitting exactly the right spot. 

Eren whimpered again, entirely unused to being over-stimulated like this, but he kept pushing into Levi. He wrapped his hand around Levi's dick and jerked him off to make up for the weaker thrusts, and Levi was coming in moments. 

Levi thrashed back and forth as he came, and he bit down on his bottom lip to muffle his scream. 

They both stayed still, just breathing heavily, for a minute, and then Eren pulled out slowly. He laid down next to Levi, on his side facing him. 

"Was I really that good?" Eren asked, while he dropped the used condom into the wastebasket next to the bed. "Or are you just really loud?"

"Mmm, both. You weren't bad, but I am just loud. Maybe I should've warned you, I'm a screamer."

"It was a nice surprise." Eren leaned closer and kissed Levi quickly, then tucked his head into Levi's neck. "If you let me nap I bet we can fuck at least once more today."

"No promises," Levi mocked. He stroked Eren's hair, though, so Eren assumed that meant "okay". 

\---

Eren woke around six. He’d managed to sleep most of the day away, and he hadn’t actually eaten yet, but his first thought when he regained consciousness was _I want to fuck again._

Levi already had plans along the same line of thought. He’d only been dozing, and he noticed as soon as Eren stirred. He didn’t quite give Eren time to fully wake up, though, before he slithered down below the blankets and between Eren’s legs. 

What did get Eren’s brain functioning was the feeling of messy, open-mouth kisses pressed to his thighs. “What are you doing?” 

Levi didn’t answer, just slid his hands under Eren’s thighs and squeezed the fleshy parts right below his ass. When Eren moaned aloud, Levi responded in kind, if a little quieter, and rubbed his face against Eren’s cock. 

“Can I see you?” Eren asked, and he started to lift the blanket, but Levi held it down. Eren then remembered why he was at Levi’s in the first place, and how self conscious Levi was about his new look. He let it go. “Okay.”

For his compliance, he got lips on his cock, covering it with kisses like Levi had with his thighs. “Oh. That’s… That’s good,” Eren breathed, and he yelped when Levi took the head into his mouth. “Fu-uck, Levi, condom!”

Levi let the cock slip out of his mouth, and he stuck a hand out from the covers, palm-up. “In the drawer on your side.” 

It made Eren’s heart flutter that he had a _side_ of the bed that was his. He did always end up sleeping on the same side, and Levi on the other, with Armin in the middle. 

“Blue box is unlubricated,” Levi specified. Lube, especially the kind that came with the condoms, did not taste good and was generally not edible. 

Eren got the condom out and handed it to Levi, letting him deal with rolling it on, and then his mouth was back on him, sucking him down faster than Eren thought possible. “Oh, god, that’s…” 

It did not occur to Eren -- very little went through his head at that moment -- that Levi was going so fast specifically because Eren was not known for lasting very long. He’d heard the reports from Armin, that Eren always, always, always came before she did, and by a lot, and she’d started making him get her almost painfully close to orgasm before he even started just so there was a hope of them finishing almost at the same time. Levi wasn’t sure if he believed it at first, but Eren’s performance earlier, while _fantastic_ , had been pretty short, just like the last time Levi had made him come -- and he hadn’t even touched Eren’s dick that time, just his sensitive thighs. If Levi wanted Eren to come with his cock down his throat, he’d have to get it there damn fast. 

Levi hadn’t done this in a while, but all those years of practice were apparently still enough that he didn’t choke or even feel much more than the slightest tickle when Eren’s cock slid into his throat. Eren, though, felt quite a lot all at once, and moaned, loud and low and half out of breath. Levi wanted so badly to pull off, to tease him for how fast he got off, but he didn’t; he gripped Eren’s hips and pulled back slowly, until he had his lips tight over just the head, then quickly went back down. It burned his throat that time, made his eyes water, but it was worth it to hear Eren whimper, fucking helpless, and spill inside Levi’s throat. 

Ignoring the condom and the lack of taste, Levi swallowed around Eren’s cock anyway, because even if there wasn’t anything to swallow it would still make Eren feel good. Sure enough, Eren made that same whimper again. 

“Levi, oh god.” Eren took heaving breaths, one hand releasing its grip on the sheet to snake under the blanket and reach for Levi. 

Levi startled when he felt fingers on the bare top of his head. He let Eren’s cock fall out of his mouth and dealt with the condom, then he moved up the bed, taking the blanket with him and throwing it over both their heads. 

In the dark, he didn’t have to think about how he looked; he kissed Eren, hoping his mouth didn’t taste too much like latex. Eren’s hand rested on the back of Levi’s head, low enough that it felt normal, as he was used to having that part shaved. Then that hand moved down, trailed over the bumps in his spine until it reached his waist, and then both arms were hugging Levi tight while Eren smiled against his lips. 

“I love you,” Eren murmured. 

“Bet you say that to all your girlfriends,” Levi mumbled back. 

“Just the one.” Eren laughed at his joke. Levi decided it was time to shut up and hug Eren back.


	42. Levi, the Arminverse, and Erenything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi’s had a kind of shitty few days. Armin’s had a kind of shitty week. Eren’s not really sure where he fits into all this shittiness but he’s trying hard to stay positive!

Levi awoke at about four in the morning, as usual, and still holding on to Eren, who didn’t seem to want to let go. 

Understandable. Levi didn’t really want to leave either. But he hadn’t gotten to run the day before and had missed it once or twice the previous week, so it was time to go. 

Before Levi left, he folded up the clothing they’d dropped on the floor the night before. There was a weight in Eren’s jeans, and it turned out to be his phone. Levi checked it to make sure it was on and had Eren’s Monday morning alarm set. 

Levi’s path for that morning went towards the college; it hadn’t rained in a few days, so the dirt path around the pond might be dry for once, and a forest run was a little more enjoyable than going through town. 

Passing by the boathouse, Levi saw the crew team already getting the boats out for practice. He’d briefly been on that team, years ago, but as much as it seemed to be made for him, and as easy as it had always been for Levi to be, however unhappily, up before dawn, he never quite took to competition well after correction. 

Also, Levi was on academic probation in his second semester (sixth semester? time was weird when you were a transfer student), because he failed his required writing-intensive class, so he couldn’t participate anyway, and never took it back up. 

Onward into the forest he went. The brush on either side of the path rustled as Levi passed, with shuffling animals awoken by his footsteps. His breath clouded in front of his face, the morning air still cold in early April. But Levi’s mind was, for once, blessedly clear, and he didn’t even notice the noise or the fog. He made his path around the pond, crossing over the branching river where it thinned out, down past the athletic fields and the equestrian stables, and back up the street-adjacent sidewalk, turning through a parking lot to go back up towards campus through the track that ran around the soccer field. It was a few miles, certainly not one of Levi’s longer distances, but enough to start his day. 

Nearing the end of his intended run, but out of breath because he was out of habit, he paused at the boathouse to stretch, and noticed a very familiar head of white-blonde hair, its orange tint all but gone, bright yellow roots starting to show. 

“Armin?” Levi called out when he regained control over his lungs. “What are you doing up so early?” 

She turned as Levi stepped up onto the dock. “Annie got up to come watch her girlfriend practice. She’s in the bathroom. What happened to your face?”

Levi reached up and touched said face, the only part of him visible around the clothes, the gloves, and the hat. “Oh. Right. I’m orange now. I’m also bald, so, you know.” He tried to remain nonchalant about it, and not show how terribly it sucked to remember how he looked. 

“...What?”

“Eren didn’t tell you?” 

“No…” Armin flushed. “He only told me that you. Um. You know.” Yeah, Annie was the only other person possibly within earshot, and she already knew, but Armin still felt strange talking about it on campus. “You did it.” 

“Yeah. We did.” 

“How was it?” 

Levi shrugged. “He’s very thorough.” 

Armin laughed. “That he is.” She patted the spot next to her. “Come sit with me.” 

He did so, and immediately Armin leaned against him. “So you can’t talk about us but you can cuddle with me?”

“I don’t know if you want me to talk about it.” 

“When we’re alone, sure.” Levi shifted so he had an arm around her shoulders. 

“You won’t get in trouble?” 

“I haven’t so far, and a handful of hardasses already know about me and Eren, and I’d be surprised if they haven’t figured us out too.” Levi shifted, trying not to make obvious his discomfort at the topic. “At this point, I’ll deal with it if it happens. Otherwise… well, I’m maybe not going to brag to the world, but I’m not going out of my way to hide it. I like you. I’m not going to be ashamed of that when I have better things to do.” 

“Like Eren?” Armin joked. 

“Yes. And you, if you want,” Levi responded, fully serious. 

“Oh. Okay.” She looked out on the water; the crew boats were small in the distance, too far out to tell apart the individual rowers. “Did you figure out what it was?” she asked, referring to his confusion over what exactly made him want, and not want, sex. 

“Not quite,” Levi answered. “And I’m not sure I care enough to figure it out at this point. Like I said, I have better things to do than worry about something that makes me happy.” 

He had, more or less, figured it out. Or maybe decided on an idea he would just… go with and see how it worked. He had to either not care about anyone, or if he did, know that they cared the same amount as he did -- they were as vulnerable as he was, though he was hesitant to word it that way. It didn’t make sense, of course not, which was why he said “not quite”. 

Just then, Annie came out of the boathouse. “Levi?”

“Mm,” he affirmed. 

“Thought I heard you. Nice face. Sticking around long?”

Levi ignored the comment about his face. “As long as Armin wants me here,” he said, which Annie thought was adorably sweet and thus kind of disturbing coming from the master of emotionlessness she’d thought Levi to be. Then again, he’d already shown himself to be an incredibly caring person, with how he’d swooped in and taken care of all the planning elements Mikasa couldn’t sort out within hours of the fledgling early formations of the what became known as the Ackerman Guard. Maybe he was just like Annie, with two sides to his personality that conflicted wildly with one another. 

“I might go for a swim then,” Annie said. “Shout if you want me to come back.” She stripped off her outer layers, ignoring the chilly morning air; Armin, knowing what all she wore under that, looked away and covered Levi’s eyes. Annie dove into the pond, nude but for her skin. When she resurfaced a few yards away, it was with a shout of “FUCK that’s cold!” 

Armin laughed, a little shocked; Levi just shook his head. He’d taken enough accidental dives into the pond when it was cold -- once the day after the last bits of ice had melted in a February a few years back -- that he knew exactly what it was like. 

Annie kept swimming though; she was pretty used to it, having done her fair share of polar plunge dares and early morning swims. 

The sun finally cleared the horizon; the light seemed to instantly warm up the world around them. 

“What time is it?” Armin wondered aloud. 

“Probably about six-thirty,” Levi guessed. “Want to go home?”

“Hmm.” Armin seemed perfectly content to stay where she was. “You say that like it’s my home too. I’ve only been living with you a few days.” 

“Really? Feels like it’s been a few months.” It was a joke, and he thought that was obvious, but when he saw her frown, he realised she didn’t get it at all. “I was kidding. I know it’s only been a week.”

Armin still frowned.

“It feels familiar to have you two around, that’s all. Like that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“I’m not moving in with you,” Armin said. “Not permanently. This is just temporary, until I can come back here.” 

“Oh. Okay.” 

“Did you not already know that?”

“Honestly? No.” Levi sighed. “You both seem so comfortable… aside from a brief period of thinking Eren was going to break up with me yesterday --” not that brief, really “-- I thought you’d both want to stay.” 

“Levi, we’ve been together, what, a few weeks? You and Eren haven’t had much longer. And, well, we’re young. Moving in with our significant other isn’t really something we’re super prepared for right now.” It twisted Armin’s stomach to say that; on the one hand, it was absolutely true. She wasn’t ready to lock herself into this relationship yet, not like that. She liked Levi a lot, but moving in was not something she would have considered any time soon had it not been a necessity. On the other hand, she did like living with Levi. In the past week the three of them had made a sort of routine, to the point where they always slept in the same positions. 

But in that forced closeness, they’d gotten too close, too fast. Armin had her whole life up to this point getting to know Eren; he and Levi at least had the last few months. But despite the massive trust Levi had placed in her by giving her his whole life story when no-one else knew it, despite how he’d listened to her talk about herself for twice as long or more, Armin hadn’t had that much time with him. It was as if they were building their relationship with each other off of what they each had with Eren, and they really couldn’t make the foundation of their pair be a whole other person and expect it to last. 

“I like being around you,” Armin said. “I really do. I like being with you, and cuddling with you, and talking to you, and all of that. But I’m not ready for it to be all the time. That’s part of why I stayed with Annie the last few days; I had to get away and make sure I still wanted what I had.” 

“Okay.”

“Is it really?” Somehow, Armin thought Levi seemed hurt. 

Levi shrugged; he didn’t meet Armin’s eyes, but he looked tired suddenly. “It’s not what I was expecting, but I can deal with it.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be. I assumed. I’m the one that should be sorry.” 

Armin shook her head. “You opened your home to me at one of the most vulnerable points in my life. I’m grateful, even if I don’t plan to stay. There’s nothing you need to be sorry for.” She extracted herself from Levi’s embrace and stood up. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

“I thought--”

“Home,” Armin repeated. “You weren’t wrong. It may not be permanent, but it’s where you and Eren are, and it’s where I sleep at night. For now, it’s the closest thing to home I have in this state.” 

Levi got up as well, and noticed Armin was staring out to the pond again. “Something wrong?”

“Nothing. I just remembered room draw is this week. We were going to try and get the same room again, but then all this happened, and we haven’t talked about it since.” 

“You could live off campus. Not with me, clearly, but I know a few apartments that take college students.”

Armin shook her head. “We would’ve had to apply months ago, and they don’t usually let sophomores live off-campus anyway. It’ll be fine; we have a few days to talk it out.” She cupped her hands around her mouth. “ANNIE!”

“WHAT!” came the distant response. 

“I’M GOING BACK!” 

Annie waved at her and then dove back underwater, making her way towards the crew team on the opposite shore. 

“She realises she’s naked, right?” Levi asked. 

“Yeah. This isn’t new. She streaks through campus at every possible opportunity, she’s a model for the art classes, I’m pretty sure she was part of a nude dance show last semester…” Armin shrugged. “And the crew team has definitely seen her naked before. She’s like their unofficial mascot.” 

“Huh. She reminds me of myself.” 

Armin laughed. “I can see why, but not for that reason.” She took Levi’s hand and led him away from the boathouse. For once, Levi kept hold of her hand as they crossed campus and headed into town. 

“What reason is that?” he asked. 

“You’re both so… tense. And kind of angry, and you try to come off as a lot more unfeeling than you are.”

“Thank you,” Levi said, fully sincere. 

“But when you’re doing something you love, there’s this whole other personality that comes out. You’re sweet. Expressive. You don’t go as far as she does in making it obvious, but it’s definitely there.”

“Ah.” 

“It’s a really interesting duality.” 

“Only you would find my mood swings interesting…” When Armin nudged him, Levi conceded, “Okay, not the only one. This way,” he said, changing Armin’s direction. “I was going to get bread on the way back.”

“From Ghost?”

“Yes.”

“Yay!” Armin grabbed onto Levi’s arm and hugged it. “Do you think that’s a fair assessment of your character? The whole, sometimes unfeeling, sometimes sweet, thing.” Armin asked. 

“More or less. I mean, you haven’t been wrong about me yet.” 

Armin grimaced. “That you know of.” 

They came upon a row of wrought iron fence posts, decorative more than functional, linked together with black chain; Levi stepped over it with about as much grace as the average person whose waist was barely higher than the chain at its lowest point, and then he helped Armin over. “What, is there some observation you haven’t told me about yet?” 

“Yeah. And I’m not going to, so don’t ask.”

“Why not? You might be right and not know it.”

“No, you’ve already told me otherwise.” 

“How do you know I wasn’t lying?” Levi asked. 

In an undertone, Armin responded, “It’s not something you would lie about. Not… Well, probably not to me, anyway. Besides, I think, in a way, I’m glad to be wrong. Don’t really know what I’d do if I was right.”

“...Okay, now I’m _really_ curious.” 

“N-no!” Armin stuttered. “It’s staying in my head, sorry. I swear it’s nothing bad, I just. Don’t want to say it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to… pressure you. Or make you think you need to change. That’s… no, I can’t do that.” 

When Levi chanced a glance at Armin, he noticed she was blushing furiously, and yet her eyes were wide with something like fear. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine. Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure.” Levi wracked his brain for another topic. “Uh. What kind of bread do you want?”

“I don’t know what they have today.” The bakery had different breads every time Armin went there -- which, admittedly, was not often. 

In contrast, Levi went several times a week, often enough that he knew some of the schedules. “Monday is eight grain, French, Khorasan, and rosemary.”

“What’s Khorasan?” 

“Not sure, but it’s kind of buttery.” 

“Sounds good.” Armin briefly looked less embarrassed, but then turned her eyes to her shoes. “If that’s okay with you.”

“I like all of their bread.” Levi hit the press-to-walk button as they neared the campus’s main crosswalk. 

“How about their pastries?” 

“Honestly, I’ve only ever gotten the bread.” 

“You should get an egg-in-a-biscuit if they have them today. They’re really good.” Invigorated once more (or pretending to be?), Armin spoke fast, and she pulled Levi along across the street once the light changed. 

“Do you want one?” 

“Well, yeah. I was planning to get one.” 

“I’ll get it for you.”

“You don’t have to…”

“I want to,” Levi insisted. “Does Eren like them? I’ll get him one as well.” 

“He does, but you really don’t have to do this.” 

“I told you,” Levi stopped once they were at the opposite sidewalk, and turned to face Armin. “I want to. I like treating you to nice things.”

“But I can get it myself.” 

“You can, but you don’t have to.” 

“It’s just a _biscuit_.” Armin’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve housed me for a week, I think I can pay for my own fucking biscuit.” 

“Armin.” 

“Don’t talk to me like that!” She pushed him away. “Don’t talk to me like you know better. I don’t care if you’re older, or wiser, or richer. I can take care of _myself_!” 

“Armin!” 

“ _Levi!_ ” she shouted back. “God, I just want a boyfriend, not a -- a sugar daddy!” 

“I wasn’t trying to be --”

“Well you’re succeeding! You do all this shit for me, you don’t accept anything in return. Do you not see how unbalanced that is?”

“It’s not _shit_ ,” Levi bit out. “And I get plenty in return.”

“Like what? Two kids taking up your bed, making a mess of your house, eating all your food?”

“I get to spend time with two people I really fucking care about, who are really great at showing their emotions while I’m so shit at it unfortunately all I know how to do is _buy you things_.” 

“Nice to know my love is worth a _biscuit_.” 

“That’s not what I said!” 

“Then what did you mean? ‘Cause that’s how it sounded.”

Levi looked away, feeling defeated. “I don’t know what I meant. I’m just trying to make up for how distant I am.”

“You’re not distant.” There was still bite to Armin’s words, but a little less. Levi looked back at her. “You may not be good at projecting your emotions but it’s not like I don’t understand them.” 

“I just want to give you what I have. Maybe that’s my age speaking, but what’s mine is yours for as long as you’re with me.” 

“What does that have to do with your age?”

“Well you’re… You’re part of the generation my generation whines about on the cover of TIME magazine. You don’t see value in money, or status, or in the empty promises you got from us. I see that value, sort of, alongside also knowing it’s bullshit. It’s not buying your love, so much as it is, wanting to make you a part of me, and I guess the only way I know how to do that is act like we’re, I don’t know, fucking married or something with a joint bank account.” 

“I don’t want that.” 

“I get it. I’ll stop.” 

“Just, ask me first, okay? Instead of just assuming you’re going to pay for things.” Armin dropped eye contact. She briefly turned her head to glance behind her; Levi looked over her shoulder, noticing the Tyvek-covered facade of Eren and Armin’s assigned dorm building. 

“Is that what this is about?” Levi asked, quietly. He didn’t want to anger her again, whether he was right or wrong. 

Armin’s shoulders slumped a little. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just, I saw it, and it pissed me off, and I remembered staying in your house this week and feeling like I was eating up your life, and that pissed me off too… But also, your whole insisting on paying for stuff, that pisses me off. Separately from everything else.” 

Levi nodded, not sure what to say in response. He understood that there was only so much he could do for Armin. He also understood that covering up something uncomfortable, warning for it, working around it, didn’t erase it and didn’t make it hurt less. The slur and the threat on their Shiga window were still there, beneath the mask, would be until the summer when the college could replace them, and that mask served as just as much a reminder as the words themselves did that someone wanted to hurt Armin. It had been awful timing, really, that he should piss her off here of all places, at the crosswalk a half-block from her dorm, though he had n doubt she would have yelled at him anywhere else, too. 

So he turned to the issue he could do something about. Armin wanted Levi to ask instead of assuming, so he asked: “Do you want me to buy you breakfast?” 

Armin sighed. “No. Thanks for asking.” Her voice was still tight. 

She walked off under the archway between the two dorm houses in front of them; Levi followed her quietly down the hill to the bakery. Armin got her own egg-in-a-biscuit, and two more besides; she handed one to Levi, which he took _very_ grudgingly, and one she saved for Eren. Levi got two loaves of bread -- one Khorasan and one French -- because he’d seen the French bread coming out of the oven as they walked in and there were very few things better than hot, fresh, wood-fire bread, in his opinion. He tore off some as soon as he paid for it, and ate that with a quiet moan before he took Armin’s proffered biscuit. 

When they got back to Levi’s apartment around seven, the first thing Levi did was head straight to his bedroom and take out the still piping hot French bread and wave it around in Eren’s face. Eren woke almost instantly, tried to sit up, and head-butted the bread. 

“Morning,” Levi greeted. 

Eren stared at the bread for a moment, squinted, and then bit a chunk off (with some trouble, as it was significantly thicker than his mouth). “Mornin’,” he mumbled around his mouthful.

“Armin’s here too.” 

“Great!” Eren started to roll over and get out of bed; Levi could hear the joints in his back crack as he stretched. He heaved himself up, headed for the front room on legs still a little wobbly. “You coming?”

Levi was still sat on the bed. “I’ll be out in a minute. Here, take the bread.” He held out the bag. 

“You okay?” Eren asked. 

“I will be.” 

Eren took the bag and fiddled with it. “How was your run?” 

“Fine. I’ll be right out,” he repeated, to emphasise that he didn’t want to talk yet. 

“Okay.” Eren started to leave; he looked back when he was at the door, then disappeared through it. “Hi, Armin.” 

Armin sat at the table, chewing on the last bit of her egg-in-a-biscuit. She handed the last one to Eren. “Hi, Eren. Breakfast?” 

“Thanks!” Eren sat down next to her, leaving the bread on the table. “Whoa, you’re…” He stared at her, trying to place the precise emotions expressed in her face, her body language, that fact that she’d left her coat on inside the house. “You’re pissed.” 

“Yes.”

“And afraid?”

“...Maybe. I kind of yelled at Levi.”

“Did he deserve it?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“Then he’ll forgive you,” Eren said, with conviction. “Are you afraid of him?”

“No, the fear is just that I’m worried I hurt him. Well, I know I did. Also, we passed by Shiga, and it. Reminded me, you know?” 

“Mm-hm.” Eren slid his hand over Armin’s. It was the best comfort he could offer, to just be there with her, and be gentle with her. 

“I need to talk to him.” 

“I’m always in support of communication,” Eren said. “What about?” 

“I need to apologise. I shouldn’t have yelled at him.” Armin looked to Levi’s bedroom door, still closed. 

“Wait until he comes out.” Eren could faintly hear the shower; after Levi’s run, of course he’d need that, and he might take a little longer than usual if he had some emotional turmoil over his… argument?... with Armin. But he would come out, once he was ready to talk to them. 

“How was last night?” Armin asked, trying to lighten the mood. 

“He screams,” was the first thing that came to Eren’s mouth. Because holy shit, was Levi loud. 

Armin’s eyebrows raised. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“And he gives _really_ good head.”

“Better than me?”

Eren opened his mouth, thought about it, and then stuffed his egg-in-a-biscuit into his mouth. 

“Eren. You can say he was better. I mean, he’s had more practice after all.”

Eren gestured to the loaves of bread sitting in their bag on the table. Through his mouthful he tried to say that Armin should have some, it was warm and fluffy, but it came out garbled as was to be expected. 

“ _Eren_.”

Eren ignored her, suddenly very interested in his breakfast. 

Levi came out of his room, wrapped up in a bathrobe. He was slightly less orange than he had been when he woke up -- but only slightly, and that pissed him off. It was still completely noticeable. But he pretended it didn’t affect him as he went to make himself some coffee. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” Eren said. He gave Armin a thumbs-up and a smile; she looked at him with an expression that spoke little of optimism. 

Still, when Levi sat down at the table with his coffee, Armin blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

Levi paused in blowing the steam away from the mug. “What for?”

“For yelling at you.”

Levi shrugged. “You were right. Nothing to be sorry about.”

“I shouldn’t have yelled, though.”

“And would I have changed what I was doing if you hadn’t? Probably not. I’m the one that should be sorry.” 

“So you’re… not mad?” Armin finally felt a little hopeful. 

“I never said that.” 

Armin’s heart sank. 

“I’m absolutely angry. And… hurt, too. I thought you wanted to stay here, I thought you liked that I bought you things and were just being awkward about it. I was trying to do something nice, and you hated it. So yeah, I’m angry.” Levi leaned back in his chair, stared at the floor. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Levi shook his head. “I should have asked. I’m not angry at _you_.”

“You sure?” Armin didn’t want to leave his emotions unspoken, to fester and fuck them over. Not that she hadn’t done the exact same thing, but now she knew better. 

Levi nodded, sincere. 

“Okay.” Armin shifted nervously, fingers twitching on the table. “So, do we kiss and make up now?”

Levi stared at her for a long moment, and finally, just before she was about to assure him she was joking, he cracked the tiniest smile. “Sure.” He got out of his seat and rounded the table, leaned over Armin, and pressed a soft kiss against her lips, pulling away as soon as she kissed him back. It was, after all, eight in the morning -- they’d all have to leave soon. No time to let it get heated. 

\---

“I could ask him to teach me,” Armin whispered to Eren. They were seated in the back of the lecture hall, and Shadis was speaking at a particularly loud volume that day, so there was no chance of him hearing her. 

Eren forced himself not to react. He knew what she was talking about, of course. Armin had been trying to get him to admit he thought Levi’s blowjobs were better than hers all throughout class. 

“We could suck you off together,” Armin suggested. 

The blood rushed into Eren’s face so fast it hurt; he leaned over the table with his hands pressed over his cheeks. 

“Maybe we could train you to not come so fast.”

“Oh my GOD,” Eren groaned under his breath. “It’s like. Not even ten in the morning and you’re already trying to turn me on? In _class_?”

“I wasn’t trying to. Your boner is your problem.” 

“ _Armin_.”

“Just admit he’s better,” Armin insisted. 

“Why would you want me to?” Eren asked. “Wouldn’t you rather I say you’re better?”

“I don’t want you to lie to me.”

Eren sighed. “Okay, fine. Yes. He made me come in five seconds instead of the ten it takes you. How’s that?” He rested his head against his arms, grumbling into his sleeve. 

“That’s what I wanted to hear.” Armin rubbed her fingers against the back of Eren’s head. “Are you embarrassed?” 

“You know, if I could control when I come, I wouldn’t do it so fast.” 

“Oh my _god_ , you two,” Sasha said from in front of them. “I love you, but shut the fuck up.”

“Sorry,” Armin said, while Eren disappeared behind his arms completely. 

“ _JAGER!_ Are you sleeping in my class?” Shadis shouted. He, the hardass of hardasses, was one of a select few professors who actually called anyone out on it, most preferring to let you miss out on your education on your own terms -- but boy, did he call Eren _out_. 

“SIR!” Eren shouted back when he sat up straight. “I was awake, just had a moment of existential embarrassment and had to hide my face!” 

Most of the class chuckled in response; Shadis scowled. “Pay attention.” 

Eren saluted him, looking as serious as possible. Shadis scowled even more terrifyingly; his eyes seemed to sink deeper into his face. But he resumed lecturing. 

“I can’t really compare you two,” Eren said to Armin after class ended. “Like, did he manage to suck me off so fast my dick still kind of hurts? Yes…” Eren trailed off, feeling his face heat up. “It was good. Really good. But saying I like what he did more or less than I like what you do…” he shrugged. “It’s not really a contest. It’s not like, next time you blow me, I’m going to think, oh, I wish Levi was the one between my legs, he’d do a better job. He wouldn’t. He’d do something completely different.”

“What’s so different?” Armin asked. 

“You take your time. You do what you feel like doing, and most of it is, like, kissing and licking more than sucking. He shoved my dick down his throat right away and… well, I’d say he let me fuck his mouth but I think that’s giving me too much credit. I kind of just laid back and took it. And that’s really not your thing. I have no doubt you could do that if you really wanted to, but you don’t; I’m sure he could do it your way if he wanted to, but he doesn’t.” Eren held open the door leading out of the art building’s atrium, letting Armin and a few other people pass through before he did. “Does that answer your question?” 

“I guess so.”

“I don’t actually know if you two _could_ do it together; you do it so different.”

“Is that a challenge?” Armin asked, in a way that suggested she was taking it that way no matter what Eren said. 

Eren took her hand as they walked away from the building. “If you want to try, go ahead. I definitely will not stop you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the bakery featured this chapter is vaguely inspired by Hungry Ghost in northampton, MA.


	43. Needs More Zombies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone wants to know about the sex, for some reason. Also Armin is a model! Zombies are not involved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: 3 day time skip mid-chapter

“So. You did it.” 

Eren wished he didn’t know what Mikasa was talking about. But he did, so he did what was quickly becoming his most common method of avoiding the topic: he stuffed an entire chicken pot mini-pie into his mouth. His eyes watered in pain, because it was just a little bit too hot. 

“He did,” Armin confirmed for Eren. She leaned into him, smiling not at all innocently. “Aren’t you proud?”

“Did what?” Connie asked. When he noticed Eren’s very clear embarrassment, he answered his own question: “Levi?”

Eren let his head fall against the dining hall table, narrowly missing his plate. 

“Daaang, I think Jean was closest.”

“We dropped the bets, you know,” Mikasa said. 

“I know, I’m just saying.” Connie grinned. “Was it good? Who topped?”

Eren groaned. “I’m not doing this!”

“Well, you definitely bottomed.” 

Eren picked his head up. “Do you really want to know?” 

Connie nodded. “I always want to know this stuff.”

“Fine,” Eren said, knowing he was about to regret several particular life choices. “I fucked him, we took a nap, and then he blew me. It was incredible. Now just let me pretend you never asked, okay?” 

“Eren fucked a tea~cher!” Connie singsonged. 

“Not so loud!” Eren hissed. “I don’t need the whole school knowing about this.” 

“Eren fucked a tea~cher!” Connie repeated, this time in a whisper. Sasha elbowed him. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t you think it’s sweet they all care so much?” Armin asked. 

“No,” Eren said. 

“Why not?”

“Do you want to tell them what we do?”

Armin’s face heated up. “Um! No. I get it. Sorry.”

“...What _do_ you do?” Connie asked. 

Armin waved her hands around in front of her face. “We’re not talking about it!” 

\---

When Levi returned home from his morning class, there was a note taped to the front door of his apartment. He took it down and, once inside, tore open the envelope to read it. 

It was a letter, a full handwritten page and rather terse, from one of the owners of the apartment below him. The note, in a very roundabout way, congratulated him on an enjoyable time, and also requested that he keep it down to a reasonable volume in the future or engage in his activities at a time when their kids weren’t home. 

Levi shredded it, mortified. 

The downstairs neighbours already thought he was weird; luckily for him they’d only moved in a few years ago, so they’d missed the life he’d lived immediately post-college, which involved him leaving the house in what they might have called “questionable” clothing and coming back dishevelled and, more often than not, shivering. But they had seen him take paintings in and out of the building numerous times -- the first, on their move-in day, which Levi hadn’t known about, and after that particular experience he started putting sheets over his paintings whenever he needed to move them. And they knew about his visitors, the people who came in, sat for his paintings for hours at a time, and left, and with the content of those paintings being what it was… 

He knew it looked weird to anyone outside his circle. It was normal to him though; both the multitude of very naked models, and the sex. So when he got notes like this asking him to more effectively hide his sexual encounters, it was a shock. 

Sort of. 

… 

Okay, he _should_ have expected it. But he never really did, and this wasn’t even his first note from them. 

Levi took to the sofa, embracing it with vigor, face-first. He groaned into the cushion. It was times like these he was thankful he lived alone; no-one was around to see him emote. 

But… he didn’t really live alone, did he? Sure, he was the only person whose name was on the renter’s agreement. But Eren and Armin were living with him, at least for the time being (that time being, in fact, for the next month, and then the semester would end and finals would pass and they’d go home, and come back after the summer with a new dorm room, a clean window, and no more reason to sleep in his bed every night…). 

And, come to think of it, Hanji and Erwin did still have their keys. Even if the only times they used those keys was to more or less break in and stage some sort of intervention. 

Of course, one of those times had to happen _right now_. Levi heard a key wiggling in the lock. He’d been seeing Erwin regularly for therapy, which meant it could only be--

“Iiiiiiiit’s Hanji!” Hanji said, flinging the door open. “Where are you, I have the finished product!”

Levi groaned again, face still buried in the couch cushions and ass up in the air as his hips rested on the sofa’s arm. He twisted his arm such that he could flip off Hanji over the back of the couch. 

“O-kay, what happened?”

Levi mumbled into the cushion. Hanji understood none of it, and so they moved closer. “Wanna repeat that?”

He did. It was no more intelligible than the first time. 

“Come on, loser, I can’t hear you.” 

Levi wished he’d had some warning before Hanji’s hand came down hard on his ass. 

“OW!” he screamed, loud enough that he was sure he’d be hearing from downstairs again. He pushed himself off the couch and stared Hanji in the eye. “Hanji!” 

“At least it got you up. Wait, are you bald? And _orange_?”

“Hanji that fucking hurt!” Levi held a hand to his ass. He wondered if he should really be in this much pain, as it’d been most of a day since Eren fucked him, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. 

“Wait, seriously?” They grinned. “Did you and Eren do it?”

“ _Yes_ , holy fuck, why would you even do that to me?”

“Sorry.” They didn’t look that sorry. “I finished the bondage thing from like… a month or so ago.”

“I assume you want me to try it on again?” Levi said. He stood awkwardly, trying to find a position that didn’t hurt. How had he been able to run so easily, but a Hanji-slap did this much damage? 

“Well, since you offered! And you can tell me all about _finally_ getting freaky with Eren while I buckle you in.” 

\---

After their dinner shift in the dining hall, Eren and Armin returned to Levi’s apartment together. Armin knocked on the door, and faintly heard a shout of “It’s unlocked!”, so she pushed it open. 

Levi was painting, which was normal; he was mostly hidden from view of the door by the huge canvas before him. Hanji, surprise, was on the couch; had been, in fact, since around one. 

“Heeeey!” Hanji called, waving at the pair with their chopsticks, with which they were eating Pad Thai out of a carton, completely ignoring the facts that a) one should not wave at people with eating utensils and b) Thai food is generally not meant to be eaten with chopsticks. (“They’re _noodles!_ It’s just easier this way. I even eat spaghetti with chopsticks.”)

Levi stood up; his eyes just barely cleared the top of the canvas. “Want to take a look? I’m a few days from done.” 

“Sure,” Eren said. He came around to the front of the painting, Armin following close behind. “Huh. Wow.”

“Just ‘wow’?” 

“I was saying wow to you; what are you wearing?”

Levi looked down at himself; he was still wearing Hanji’s thing. “Oh this? Just a little something I threw on,” he said, deadpan, while Hanji snickered across the room. It had taken them half an hour to get him into it. “How’s the painting?”

“Uhh…” Eren looked over it his mouth opening and closing while he tried to find a sufficient comment. “Well, it definitely looks like me.” 

“What’s wrong?” Levi asked. 

Eren blinked a few times. “My naked body is going to be on display in one of the most prestigious modern art galleries in the world. I mean, it’s not that that’s wrong… It just kind of, hit me.” 

“You won’t be alone, at least,” Hanji called across the room. “I’ll be right there beside you.” 

“Me too,” Armin said. Eren and Levi both whipped their heads around to look at her. “I mean. If you want.” 

“Are you sure?” Levi asked. 

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Armin… Are you sure that’s something you want?” Levi asked again. “You will have to be naked.” 

“I know.” Armin took her eyes off the painting to meet Levi’s eyes. “I’m not that uncomfortable about my body for its own sake. It’s just how other people see me that bothers me. But, well, you’re titling these with the person’s pronouns, right?”

“Yes…” 

“So, anyone who looks at it is going to have their answer about me.” 

Levi breathed out harshly and ran a hand over the top of his hat-covered head. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Most people don’t read the plaques. Not on new shit.” 

“But they do read the artists’ statements,” Hanji offered. “At least, the ones at Stohess are printed big enough to be eye-catching. So you just gotta mention what the titles are doing…” 

“I mean, you don’t have to paint me. Or you could, I don’t know, wait? Do me later. But I’d like to be a part of this, if I can.” 

“I just don’t want you to regret this,” Levi said. 

“Who says I will?”

“No, Armin, listen, ‘cause you need to think about this,” Levi said, quietly but with force. “When I paint someone, they’re out there for the world to see. I’m well-known enough that anyone, literally any person could find my work without looking that hard. I have paintings installed long-term in private and public galleries. I’ve been in joint shows in major museums. This painting won’t just be in Stohess; it’ll be on their website, and mine, and if someone buys it at the end of the exhibit then it’ll be in their house or their gallery. Possibly forever, and they’ll have partial advertising rights. You could be on their websites, on auctions, on… you could be on fucking billboards if someone wanted to go that far. Doing this, it’s you giving me permission to out you to the whole world.” 

“Didn’t Hanji do the same thing?”

“Yes,” Hanji cut in. They seemed suddenly less into the idea than before. “And it was a big deal for me. I thought about it a lot; I knew what the risks were. Are. I already knew I wanted him to paint me before he started this series.” 

“You don’t think I know the risks?”

“Do you?” Hanji asked. 

“You’ll never be able to go back in the closet,” Levi said. 

“I don’t want to,” Armin said. 

“What if you _need_ to? You’ll be a target for --”

“I already am. I may live in the Wall Bubble but I’m not even safe here.” Armin sighed. “I know what the risks are. I’ve thought about it. I want to do it anyway.”

Levi nodded slowly. He rinsed out his brushes and set them on the ledge of his easel, then rose from his painting stool. “Give me a minute,” he said, and he walked off to his room. 

Eren and Armin exchanged glances; Hanji took another few bites of Pad Thai with a confused and concerned look on their face. 

Levi came back; he appeared unchanged. “Okay. I’ll do it. On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Come to the opening.” 

Armin tensed. 

“You too, Eren. Obviously. It’s on the last day of finals. If you take yours early, you can come down the night before. I’ll already be in the city, but I’ll pay for your train tickets and everything.”

“Levi…” 

“If you don’t think you can do it, I’ll still paint you, but it’ll have to be after.” 

“Levi,” Armin said curtly. “I can’t believe this.”

Levi shrugged. “Guess you’ll just have to wait then…”

“I can’t believe…” Armin continued, “that you weren’t already going to invite me.”

Levi stared at her for a few quiet moments, watching her cross her arms over her chest and huff at him. Then, he nodded, very slowly. “Well played. You honestly had me fooled there.”

“I’m not joking. Were you seriously not going to invite us?”

“Of… of course I was.”

“I want to go. And I want you to paint me, too. So there.”

Levi stared some more. Slowly, he said, “I thought it would convince you not to do it…” 

“Why?”

“People are going to be able to say what they think of you, right to your face. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Yes. Very much so. A lot of things bother me, Levi; doesn’t mean I’m not going to do them. Isn’t that what you do -- if something scares you, you do it?” 

“She does have a point there,” Hanji offered, despite that they were still conflicted. 

“I thought you said you didn’t have to live by my rules,” Levi said.

“I don’t,” Armin said. “But I do it all the time anyway.”

“What about you, Eren? You’ve been quiet.”

Eren frowned. “Why ask me? Armin can make her own decisions.”

 

“Thank you, Eren,” Armin said. 

“Besides, you could just say no if you didn’t want to do it. I’m not really sure what your actual motive is here.” 

“Yeah, well…” Levi paused. “That makes two of us. I’ll do it.” He looked at Armin. “But once we take the photos, you can’t back out. I have the time to find another model after I’m done if you hate it, but I’m going to paint you.”

“That’s fine,” Armin confirmed. 

“And one more thing.”

“What?”

“I’m going to pay you.”

Armin stared at him for a few moments. “I assume you pay all your models.”

“I do. You won’t be sitting as long, but I’m taking your pictures, so you’ll get a pretty big amount too.”

“He paid you?” Armin asked Eren. 

“I haven’t yet,” Levi said. “I will once the painting is finished. I’ve paid Hanji.”

“Okay,” Armin said. “I’ll do it.” 

“Hm. All right, go sit down. I’m done painting for the day, so we can all, I don’t know, watch shitty Netflix or something.” He started to clean his brushes a little more thoroughly, ensuring there was no paint left in them to get dry and crusty overnight; unlike the oils, acrylic paint would dry that fast and would be much harder to get out after that happened. Wrapping up his palette, he noticed Armin had only moved back a little, and was still watching him. “What?” 

She shrugged. “Just thinking.” Her eyebrows drew down, and she frowned like she was trying to figure out some particularly difficult puzzle. 

Levi squinted as if staring at Armin would reveal those thoughts; it didn’t, so he left for the sofa, plopping himself down in an armchair across from Eren and Hanji. 

She’d never say it, but inside Armin’s head, she wondered if she actually was right about Levi after all. But she couldn’t assume, so she pushed it aside once again. 

Armin moved closer to the painting to look at it from a better angle. Levi had spared no detail; every freckle and fold and hair of Eren’s was there, rendered in the same loving detail as in any of Levi’s other paintings. The chub in his belly and thighs looked like it would squish if she poked the painting, and she could even make out individual eyelashes. She was only surprised that Levi said it would still be a few days; to Armin’s eye, it looked finished, but of course Levi would see something wrong with his own work. The thing smelled god-awful though, like rubber, which was somehow more off-putting than turpentine, and it was glossy even as thinned out as Levi had made the paint. Still, it looked like Eren, perhaps even more than the tacked-up photos did. She thought maybe that was because Levi knew Eren, and put that familiarity into his painting. Armin wondered what she and her closeness with Eren could do, were she so skilled at painting. 

“Armin, come here!” Eren called. “We’re watching Pride and Prejudice!”

“The Keira Knightley one?” 

“Yep!”

Armin glanced over the painting once more as she said, “Coming!” As she sat down next to Eren on the couch, Levi grumbled from his armchair that the movie needed way more zombies. 

“We haven’t even started it,” Hanji said. 

“I’ve seen it before. It needs more zombies.”

\---

“Alright,” Levi said as the credits rolled. “That was better than I remembered.”

He had a hand in Armin’s hair, had been gently scratching her head for the last half hour or so, and as a result her hair resembled a fluffy pale orange puff. She was half-asleep, lulled by the fingers pressing rhythmically against her scalp; it had been a great idea to switch her seat to Levi’s lap after she got snacks halfway through the movie. Groggily, she responded, “That’s because you know what love feels like now, Mister Daaaaaarcy.”

“Uh-huh. So which one of you is Elizabeth?”

“I am,” Hanji responded, after a heartbeat’s pause in which they noticed Armin’s eyes fly open in shock. They got off the couch and reached out their arms toward Levi. “Dance with me!”

Levi gestured at the blonde in his lap. “I’m busy.” 

A momentary smile shone on Armin’s face before she turned her head to hide it against Levi’s leg. “Get back to work, Fitzwilliam,” she mumbled, and Levi resumed his gentle scritching of her scalp. 

Eren was covering his mouth with fisted hands and trying very hard not to make any high-pitched noises at these developments. He was pretty sure Levi hadn’t actually realised what he’d said, may not have even meant it that way, but still. It made Eren happy, as much as it made Armin shocked and embarrassed, that Levi felt comfortable enough in their company to be so casual about his feelings as to not notice he kind of just implied he loved Armin. 

He probably didn’t mean it that way. Really. Eren knew that, and so did Armin. Hanji was already convinced Levi was hopelessly in love with both of his partners but also, Hanji, despite not being one for romance themself, was a bit of a romantic when it came to other people, and so might have been overblowing it a little. Levi probably didn’t love Armin, not like that at least. 

Still though. It was _really_ sweet. 

“ _Levi!_ ” Hanji shouted, and that was the only warning they gave before slamming bodily into Levi. 

Levi’s hands moved quickly to protect Armin’s head from any stray kneecaps. “Hanji what the fuck.”

Hanji flung their hands around Levi. “I’m so happy you managed to find so much love!” 

“I know you’re happy, what the fuck does that need a bodyslam for? You’re heavy!” He started to help Armin get out from between them before Hanji started wiggling. As soon as she’d extracted herself, another weight added to the one already pinning the two of them down. “Ack!”

“I’m really happy too!” Eren said. He wasn’t hugging Levi so much as draped awkwardly over the side of the chair and half of Hanji. 

“Yeah, okay, this is all very happy and sweet, now can you two please get off? You’re crushing us.” 

Armin was not actually being crushed at this point. “Are they really that heavy?”

“No, but the weight of their emotions is.” 

“In that case…” Armin squeezed herself into an open space, giggling into Levi’s ear. 

“Armin!” 

\---

After Hanji left, and while Eren was in the shower trying to get charcoal dust and ink out of the confusing multitude of places all over his body it had ended up, Armin lay on Levi’s bed, reading for class. He steamed his white shirts for the days ahead, having let more than the usual number collect unwashed, and then joined her. 

“Hey,” Armin said. She set her textbook aside, just finished with her reading, and leaned against him. “Are you okay? And you can be honest if you’re not.”

Levi nearly said “I’m fine”, but he caught himself. “You’re asking about earlier, right? When we… fought.” 

“I’m asking about anything, but yeah, that’s part of it.”

“I’ll be okay,” Levi said. “I’m a big boy, I can handle being yelled at.” 

“I am sorry.” 

“But you were right, so you don’t need to be sorry. I already told you that.” 

“Yeah…” She sighed. “I should be more grateful though.” 

“Should you?” Levi asked. “I don’t know about that.”

Armin looked confused. 

“It makes me feel like a dirty capitalist to say this, but I guess I kind of am in a way. I never feel right about taking money unless I think I’ve done something to deserve it. It’s why I refused to beg when I was homeless, and it’s why I need my paintings to be perfect before I’m willing to show them, let alone sell them. But I also push money on other people now that I have it, because I know it’s not really emotionally productive for them to feel that way. So I don’t think you’re lacking in gratitude. I just worry you’ve got too much attachment to, you know, ideals of productivity deserving rewards.”

Armin looked just as confused, but in a sort of different way that Levi couldn’t quite describe. “You know,” Armin began, then paused. “You come off as a guy who’s not too intelligent.”

“Thanks,” Levi said sarcastically. 

“That’s not a bad thing, it’s just an observation. But you actually have a lot of really deep, perceptive thoughts I wouldn’t expect of you.” 

“I’m full of surprises.” 

Armin thought back to an hour earlier, when Levi had let slip that Armin could be his Elizabeth Bennett, his _I love you most ardently_ , and grinned. “You really are.” 

\---

The rest of the week passed in a sort of blur, especially for Armin, who was running between classes and rehearsals and work and a very rushed room draw in which she and Eren got a room together again, but a different one facing the inner courtyard, before she had to race off to the final rehearsal before the opening of the 2014 Rocky Horror Show. 

When she arrived, the first thing she saw was the cake in the middle of the stage. 

Armin’s first thought was that it was someone’s birthday, but she looked around and everyone else seemed just as confused as she was. 

Did Ymir and Krista just bring in a random cake for them? 

Said directors arrived onstage, and confirmed it: it was for the cast and crew to celebrate all their hard work. 

“But… it’s a bit bittersweet,” Krista said. At first Armin thought she was talking about the cake, but then Krista clarified. “We have some news for you all.” 

In the moment’s pause before she continued, it seemed like the tension on that stage increased a thousandfold. 

“This will be the last Rocky Horror Show performed in association with the Wall College Performing Arts Department.”

There were shocked faces, a few gasps, and more than one person seemed ready to shout about the unfairness of it all, but no-one did. So Ymir explained without having to talk over anyone like she expected. 

“The first time we did this show, I was a student here. I suggested it, because I wanted to play Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Krista was the director. And it’s been revived every year since because people enjoyed it. When I came back to teach, we took it upon ourselves to make it a tradition, and we have a really close tie with the show. 

But, it’s painfully out of date. We’ve known for a long time, but after the events of the last few years, with members of our cast and crew harassing the very students we hoped this play would protect, we have to realise it’s time to turn this tradition over to history. So we decided that’s what we’re going to do.”

“We have three shows this weekend,” Krista said. “The last three shows we’ll do. So you guys better make it the best three shows we’ve ever seen.” 

Armin felt fingers against the back of her hand; she looked, and noticed Mikasa was reaching for her. Sasha was on her other side. In fact, the whole cast and crew was slowly forming into a circle on stage, linking hands. 

Krista and Ymir looked around at the students encircling them. “Looks to me like they’re up for it,” Ymir said. “Let’s have some cake. And then while we digest we can talk about what can replace this tradition.”


	44. Adjust Your Own Mask Before Helping Someone Else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cast pretends to not take the show too seriously.

Columbia’s hat, filled with slips of paper, went around the cast in their pre-show backstage circle. Armin stood to the side with Krista and Ymir; the three of them were already fully in costume, as they wouldn’t pick roles from the hat. 

As soon as all the roles were assigned, everyone went off to the costume rack, which was mostly accessories to be worn over corsets, shorts, skirts, high heels. Annie swam in a leather jacket about Reiner’s size; Jean put on a white wig while Mikasa, wearing a truly extreme amount of makeup, wondered aloud if he really needed it, what with his own hair bleached stark white. 

Ymir and Krista went out first to greet the crowd and remind them not to use flash photography, and to only use the props they were given at the entrance. They didn’t announce that it was the closing run of the show -- that would only come at the final performance. 

Then it was Armin’s turn. She stepped out in the same powder blue corset Krista had laced her into on her first day, and a shiny, plasticky black skirt that was too large for her, its waistband shoved up under the bottom edge of her corset to stay in place. She only wobbled once in her borrowed heels, before she left the wings, but greeted the crowd with a smile. 

Her opening remarks were, more or less, the contents of an airline safety video, complete with a seatbelt and oxygen mask pulled out from under her skirt. Then, she asked the question: “I need a little help with something; who’s never seen the Show before?” 

Many hands shot up, their owners grinning; they all knew exactly what they were in for, and probably had seen the show before. Another few hands, belonging mostly to people whose impassive or confused expressions meant they had no clue what was about to happen, and Armin didn’t feel right calling on them yet. Three people grabbed their friends’ hands and jerked them upwards; Armin knew better than to pick on them. The last few hands went up, their tentative owners starting to blush as their nearby friends cheered; they knew what was going on too, and were willing to subject themselves to it, but clearly hadn’t actually been a part of this before. 

It was from this last group that Armin picked two people; one was someone Armin thought looked familiar, but she couldn’t remember their name; the other was a first-year who always sat in the back of Armin’s African History class. They came onstage, and Armin asked for their names and pronouns. 

“Nifa, any pronouns,” the first said; “Tom, he pronouns,” said the second. 

“Well hello, Nifa and Tom,” Armin said, as if she had never met them before. “I wonder if you can help me. I’m collecting sounds for a dear friend of mine, and what she’s looking for right now is fake orgasms. Do you think you can give her a sound or two?”

Nifa’s eyes lit up; Tom looked terrified. Regardless, they both agreed to do it. 

“Perfect! All right, nice and loud into the mic.” Armin passed Nifa the microphone she had been speaking into, and let them go about their business with it. Her excited expression betrayed none of how awkward it was to watch two people she barely knew pretending to orgasm while they also tried not to die of embarrassment. 

Finally, Armin sent them back to their seats, their faces red as tomatoes. “You know, I never realised until just now,” she outright lied, “I could give a sound myself!” She locked eyes with Eren and Levi, who were sitting in the middle of the section to her right. Eren grinned; Levi leaned toward him and said something. Armin wouldn’t have heard it even if she didn’t start whimpering, re-creating the performance she’d once given Eren and Mikasa, but louder, better, because she knew what it was like to come by someone else’s hand now. 

Armin transitioned seamlessly into her song, noticing as she did that Levi was trying his very best to hide a smile behind his hand, as he continued to lean against Eren’s shoulder. She’d poke at Levi for that later. 

\---

Eren had flowers. Armin didn’t understand why he had flowers; she was only barely a part of the show. But he had flowers, and after the show he almost crushed them when he hugged her. 

Levi hung back at first -- they were still in a very public place, Armin realised, which hadn’t mattered so much when the lights were off but would probably matter more in the middle of the crowd of people trying to leave. But then he came forward and hugged her as well. 

“You did great,” Levi said. 

“I didn’t do much,” Armin said. 

“But you did it really well.” 

Armin rolled her eyes. “I guess. Mikasa was the real star.” 

“I don’t know,” Eren said. “I love my sister, but I couldn’t stop watching you.” 

Armin swatted him lightly on the arm. “Pay attention to the play!” 

“Oh, he was,” Levi said. “He couldn’t look away whenever that blond guy was on stage.” 

“He’s a good dancer,” Eren said of Reiner, who had picked Columbia’s part for the night’s show. 

“Uh-huh.”

“He is! Don’t be like that,” Eren whined. “He’s too tall for me anyway.”

“You probably shouldn’t have a thing about being the tall one in a relationship when you’re barely average height,” Levi pointed out. 

“Well I lucked out that both of you are short, then.” 

Armin watched her boyfriends make snippy comments at each other with a growing urge to head-butt both of them in the chest and just sort of stay there. Instead, she said to Levi, “I saw you smiling earlier.”

“You saw nothing.” 

“Yes I di~id. While I was on stage, you were smiling.”

“I was laughing at you,” Levi said, so deadpan it kind of hurt. 

“Oh. Really?” Armin asked. She seemed to deflate. 

Levi dropped his act immediately. “God, no, of course not. I’m--”

Armin did headbutt him then, more in the shoulder though, because she was almost Eren’s height in these heels and didn’t want to risk falling on her face by bending over enough to get Levi in the chest. “Asshole.” 

Levi’s arms came around Armin; she’d stopped him before he could apologise and he tried to get it out again but was interrupted by a loud shouting in his direction. 

“ _Armin and Levi, sitting in a tree--_ Hmf!” Connie had shouted from the stage, though why he was up there was anyone’s guess; Mikasa had swept in and swiftly clapped a hand over his mouth. 

Sasha, scrambling for a word to finish it off, shouted “G-R-A-D-I-N-G!”

“Grading?” Mikasa asked.

“I don’t know!” 

“Hey,” Levi mumbled, “why don’t you go get changed?”

“Sure.” Armin was starting to feel as awkward as Levi seemed about that particular callout. No-one had spared them more than a glance -- they recognised Armin, mostly, but Levi didn’t really read visually as a professor, so anyone who didn’t know him didn’t think much of it -- but it still had that _feeling_. 

Armin was afraid to articulate it, but as she walked away towards the stage, she couldn’t shake the feeling, one she’d somehow never really had before, that they were doing something wrong. 

She knew Connie was trying to support her; she knew Mikasa and Sasha were trying to protect her. But Armin couldn’t ignore the fact that Levi’s relationship with her, and with Eren, wasn’t entirely without its criticisms. For sure, if it were anyone else dating a professor, Armin would expect some sort of power imbalance, and even though it wasn’t there in the case with Levi, she couldn’t pretend it wasn’t possible, that something like that could develop. There was only so much that saying “well he’s not _my_ professor” could do to deny it. 

She shook her head; she didn’t want to be thinking like this. Eren never had this problem; Levi had, and got over it, for the most part, a while ago. Why was Armin suddenly so aware of it, when she hadn’t been before?

“Hey,” Mikasa greeted when Armin got backstage. “Want some help getting out of that thing?” she asked, indicating Armin’s corset. 

“Yeah, thanks,” Armin said, and Mikasa got to work loosening the laces enough that Armin could unhook the front. 

This was the difference, Armin realised. Levi taking advantage of them, if not using their relationship to affect their grades, would be him cutting them off from others -- but he encouraged them to be around their friends (well, except when he was worried about their safety). An imbalance of power would be him making himself the only thing that mattered in their lives, or using them as accessories to boost his own life, or trying to mold them to fit what he wanted them to be. It would be expecting them to support him, or expecting something in return for his love -- and he didn’t. He supported them -- they supported each other. 

She breathed easier, and it wasn’t just because she got out of her corset and into a t-shirt. 

Armin wondered if she should stay, hang out with the cast a little more, but the only person still around when she finished changing and removing her makeup was Reiner, who was yawning widely and waiting for Bertholdt to finish up with stage crew’s between-shows Clean ‘n’ Screw, (which sounded way more dirty than it was -- they just cleaned up the stage and checked for loose screws before they left for the night). Armin realised she was also pretty tired, so she went back out to meet Eren and Levi, who were waiting for her on one of the couches in the entrance area. 

As soon as he saw her, Eren smiled at Armin and held up a finger to his lips. He glanced down at Levi, who was leaning against his arm, fast asleep. “He’s been sleeping less than usual,” Eren said in a low voice. 

“How are we going to get him home?” Armin asked. 

“I can try and carry him.”

“Do you think just because he’s tiny, he’s not heavy?”

“‘M not tiny,” Levi mumbled, awoken by even the near-whispers. He rubbed at his eyes and sat up straight. “And I can walk myself home.” He yawned widely and got up. 

They walked to Levi’s apartment hand-in-hand in the dark, with Armin in the middle; once there, they pretty much collapsed into bed, only barely taking the time to get out of their clothes. 

Armin and Eren awoke at about the same time, completely tangled in each other. Levi’s third of the bed was empty, but he came out of the bathroom just after they started giggling at the mess of blankets they couldn’t quite unwrap themselves from. 

“Need some help?” Levi asked. 

“Please,” Armin said. “Wait, does your shirt say…?”

Levi looked down at his sleep shirt, only realising at this moment that the text on it read _Anime Titties_. “Hanji bought this for me,” he explained. “I didn’t even realise this was the one I put on.”

“Wait, what does it say?” Eren asked. He turned his head as much as he could, tangled and stuck as he was. “Oh my god. _Levi_.”

“You can get yourselves out,” Levi said, and he started to leave the room. 

“Levi wait!” Armin called out. “Help us!”

Eren wriggled, testing the blankets for any weak points. “Come on, we love your anime titties!”

“What the fuck,” Levi said, but he took pity on his very much stuck partners. He started pulling at sheets. “How did you even get so wound up in these? Wait, is that a knot?” He tugged at said knot, and suddenly Eren and Armin could move; they untangled themselves the rest of the way on their own. 

“Are you sure you weren’t the one who tied that knot in the first place?” Armin asked. 

“Course not. As adorable as you two looked stuck together, I wouldn’t tie you up without your permission,” Levi said. 

“Kinky,” Eren said. 

“Yes. It is.” 

\---

An hour before the last of the shows, Armin sat on the edge of the theatre building’s loading dock, her phone pressed to her ear. 

“ _Armin?_ ” 

“Hi, Grandpa.”

She’d called him every few days since spring break, which was more than usual; she was more a once-a-week kind of person previous to that. 

“ _How are you? Today’s your last show, right?_ ”

“Mm-hm. I’m doing all right, but one of the actors picked two big parts and she wanted to go through with it, but after the second show some of us had to carry her home.”

“ _Oh dear. Is she okay?_ ”

“Yeah, Sasha’s pretty strong. She didn’t show she was tired at all during the show, and she got here early today saying she’s doing great. Still, I think the directors are going to refuse if she picks another role with a lot of dancing.”

“ _You’re not straining yourself too much, are you?_ ”

“No.” Armin laughed. “Actually, most of my part is sitting off-stage and yelling every few minutes.” 

“ _Wish I could be there to see it._ ”

Armin laughed again, this time more nervously. “Trust me, Grandpa -- no you don’t.”

“ _If you say so. I want to support you, though._ ”

“You’re supporting me right now.” 

“ _Hm. How are you doing aside from the show?_ ”

Armin kicked her legs out. “Um, I’m alright. My classes are going pretty well. I actually wrote a paper this morning; I don’t think it was very good but I should have time to look it over before it’s due.”

“ _Do your best._ ”

“I always do.”

“ _I know you do. How are your friends?_ ”

“Pretty good. Well, half of them are in the play, so they’re definitely overworked, but they’re feeling good about it I guess. I don’t get to see Mikasa too much, except this past week because we’ve been in practice together, ‘cause she’s so busy, but we still do homework together with Eren for our art class.”

“ _And how’s Eren?_ ” Grandpa asked, his voice just a little suggestive. 

“Grandpa…” Armin tucked her legs under her chin. “Do you have to ask it like that?” 

“ _Sorry, kiddo. Can you blame me though? I’m happy for you. You have a boyfriend I don’t even need to threaten._ ”

“W-well.” Armin thought about Levi, who her grandfather would most likely come at with a garden ax if he knew anything about him. But she wasn’t ready to tell Grandpa she had two boyfriends, so that wasn’t something she had to worry about yet. “Eren’s good.”

“ _He treating you well?_ ”

“Of course, Grandpa. You know how he is. He’s been taking care of me a lot, since the threat. All my friends have.” _And Levi_ , she thought. 

“ _Good. And you’re doing okay after that?_ ”

“I mean, as well as I can be. The school can’t replace our window until summer.”

“ _So they’re letting you look at that garbage every day?_ ” 

“I guess so… But we’re staying with -- with a friend in town. So we’re okay.”

“ _Still, that’s not right._ ”

“I know. But I get it; they’d have to move people out of at least four rooms to do the replacement, and at this point in the semester no-one has the time to pack up their room and move house. I don’t either. We just keep the curtains closed and only go back when we absolutely need to.”

“ _And that’s fine with you?_ ” Grandpa asked, disbelieving. 

“No, but even if they said they wanted to do it right away, I’d probably make a case that it would disrupt our studies to be forced to move. And I would have been staying off-campus for a little while anyway. I don’t like it, but the problem isn’t construction; it’s the fact that there weren’t protections in place for people like me already.”

“ _...You’re right. Still, it’s not fair to you.”_

“Well, they’re returning some of our room and board.”

“ _Really? Thought your college was greedier than that._ ”

“They are. I suspect someone convinced them.” She didn’t mention who she suspected that someone was. Someday, Armin would tell her grandfather all about Levi -- just not yet. She had a feeling Ymir and Krista might have had a hand in it too, and maybe even Professor Pixis. 

“ _Well, you’ve got some good people around you._ ”

“Heh. I guess so.”

“ _I’m glad you’ve got so many people who care about you. You know I always worry about you._ ” 

“I know, Grandpa.” How could she not? Armin was the only family he had left. Her grandfather could hide it all he wanted but the deaths of Armin’s parents had changed him, made him fear for his grand-daughter in a way he never thought he would have to, and Armin could understand that. It had changed her too. 

The door behind Armin opened and Annie stuck her head out. “We’re convening.”

Armin gave her a thumbs-up. “I have to go, Grandpa.”

“ _Thanks for calling, Armin. I love you._ ”

“Love you too.”

\---

It was Sunday night, and despite that Mikasa had bruises forming under her eyes, visible once her makeup came off, from three shows in a weekend she still had to practice for her first-year performance only a week away. She’d been working at it all semester, but at the last minute her pianist had broken two fingers and she needed a replacement, for which position Eren volunteered. 

“You haven’t played piano in years,” Mikasa pointed out. “Since before the accident.”

“Not true,” Eren said. “I play all the time.” 

“When?” 

“In our house. Have you never seen me?”

“No.” There was a piano on the first floor of Shiga house, and every once in a while Mikasa heard someone playing, but never checked to see who it was. 

Armin, watching this conversation unfold, wracked her brain and realised she hadn’t noticed either. “Do you really?” She knew Eren used to play as a kid, and he’d been pretty good, but she didn’t think he took it up again. 

“Yeah. Like, at least once a week.” 

Mikasa squinted at him. “All right then. Show me what you’ve got.” She took him by the arm and dragged him out the side door, in the direction of the neighbouring music building. 

Eren waved over his shoulder. “See you later!” he shouted, though he wasn’t exactly sure how late he would be up with Mikasa. 

Armin turned to Levi; he and Eren had been at all three shows. “Should we head out?”

“Mm.” He reached for Armin’s hand. 

Levi was silent through the walk home, and so Armin was too. She focussed on the setting sun, putting one foot in front of the other, and the warmth of Levi’s hand in hers. 

Levi seemed a little lost in his thoughts, though; Armin found she was directing him home, dragging him into turns he would have missed. She wondered where they would end up if she just let him do his thing. 

“You’re distracted,” Armin pointed out after she redirected him for the third time. 

“Hm,” Levi answered, and he stopped walking. “Can I kiss you?”

“Of course,” Armin said. “You always can.”

She didn’t see Levi move; he was by Armin’s side, and in the next moment he was on her lips, years of practice giving him a soft landing even with his hand at the back of her neck holding her still. 

This kiss was deeper, harder, more passionate than most of those she shared with Levi. In fact Armin didn’t think he’d kissed her this way since that time they almost fucked. He tilted his head and pushed forward; Armin wound her arms around him, holding him close even as she leaned back, bent her knees and forced him to lean over her. 

The world drew in around them until Armin was no longer aware they were making out in the street in front of Levi’s apartment. Everything around them was hazy in the brief moments her eyes were open, like they were in a bubble of glass that wasn’t uniform enough to focus the outside. Levi kissed her like he’d been holding back for years; Armin kissed him like she wouldn’t see him again for months. 

The first time Levi pulled back, they stayed separated for about two seconds before diving back in, Armin gripping the back of his shirt, wrinkling it as he sucked on her tongue. 

The second time, Armin chased after him, their lips touching once, twice, three more times until they stuck and Armin laughed through her nose and pretended, for Levi’s sake, that she couldn’t feel the sides of his lips turn upwards. 

The third time it was Armin who pulled back, and she intended to go right back in after a breath but stopped short when she saw Levi’s eyes, gray turned black with dilated pupils. That breath she took caught in her throat, and suddenly the world came back. 

“What was that?” Armin asked. 

“I have no idea.” Levi pulled back slowly, like he didn’t want to. “Let’s go inside,” he said, and Armin couldn’t agree more. 

Clean as Levi’s apartment was, it had signs of Eren and Armin all over it; Armin’s coat on the rack by the door, Eren’s shoes on the mat, Armin’s books and laptop on the kitchen counter, Eren’s headphones on the coffee table, Armin’s blanket folded neatly on the sofa, Eren’s clothes in the open washing machine. It was as if they really did live there, permanently, even though they didn’t. It felt like home, even if Armin didn’t want it to be that way forever. 

Perhaps it wasn’t so much that this room felt like home. No… Armin knew herself as her own person, and yet Eren had always felt like home. Somehow, without her even noticing, Levi was starting to feel like home, too. Levi’s hand on her back grounded Armin as much as it excited her. 

But Levi didn’t kiss her again, just led Armin into the bedroom and tossed her a sleep shirt, making it clear that when he’d said “Let’s go inside,” he meant “Let’s go to sleep” and not “Let’s fuck.” 

He never looked at her while she was changing, which Armin thought was incredibly respectful but also wholly unnecessary. Still, she left him to his own choice and climbed into bed after him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Hey.”

“Hello.” 

“Did you enjoy the show?” Armin asked. 

“Yeah. It’s kind of sad they’re ending it though.”

“They’re doing what they have to do. Apparently they’re thinking of bringing in a new play, one that’s a little more, hmm, respectful of trans women. And a little more obvious about the fact that the main character is supposed to be a trans woman.”

“Wait.” Levi squinted. “Frank-n-furter is supposed to be a trans woman?”

“Yeah. ‘Transvestite’, ‘transsexual’ -- those were the words of the time. You’re older than me, shouldn’t you know this?”

“I… guess. I honestly didn’t pay that much attention until I was in college.” 

“Oh. Well, that was it. I mean, I don’t blame you. I didn’t know either until I started rehearsing the show, I thought she was just a cross-dresser. But with the new play, because it’s not the cult-film sort of thing with a history of doing things like picking a cast from a hat, they’ll be doing a regular cast, and they’re not going to do it at all unless they can find a trans girl to play the lead and another to play her, uh, mentee.”

“Are you trying out?”

“I haven’t decided.” 

“Would you have to fake another orgasm?” 

Armin groaned. “Stooop!”

“Hey.” Levi turned onto his back so he could face her. “You were good.” 

Armin turned her face half into the pillow, looking out at Levi with one eye. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

There was a tension in Levi’s voice, a hint of a question in his eyes not making it to his throat; a tension growing and shrinking and ever-growing, and Armin, thinking maybe he didn’t just mean _let’s go to sleep_ wanted to follow it -- but god, she was so tired. She turned her face fully into the pillow and laughed. “No,” she mumbled, “no orgasms.”

“None at all? You’re going from Rocky Horror to something kid-friendly?”

“I don’t actually know. Maybe there are orgasms. I haven’t read the play, I don’t even know the title.” Armin looked out at him again. “You really think I was good? For the, what, ten minutes I was on stage?”

“Mhm.” Levi faced her fully then, eyebrows raised like he couldn’t believe what he was about to ask. “Think I could hear it again?”

Armin was just as surprised. “O-oh.” Her mouth hung open while she searched for a more coherent answer and, unbidden, a yawn worked its way up her throat. “Um, maybe another time.”

Levi nodded and touched his nose to hers, which Armin thought was _way_ too sweet of a thing for him to be doing. “You’ve had a long few weeks.”

“Yeah. Between the show, and the shit of last week… Despite all that, I feel lucky. Because of it, I actually got to know another trans woman.” Armin looked down, and a little to the left. “Maybe even two.”

Levi furrowed his brows. “I know Ymir, but who’s the second?”

“Ah. Well. Um.” Armin stuttered. “I’m not actually sure about the other. It’s just a feeling.”

Levi stared at Armin for a moment, then let out a little laugh. “Have you talked to her about it?”

“Oh, I. No.” Armin laughed, clearly nervous. “I don’t think… I don’t think this person even knows.”

“What do you mean? Wouldn’t she know?” 

“Not necessarily. I mean, I knew my whole life, but not everyone does. Most people don’t, I think.” Armin hunched forward, looking distinctly nervous. “Some people don’t figure it out until they’re old.” 

“Oh, I know that. Do you mean she still thinks she’s a man?” 

“That’s one way of putting it.” 

“Was that not right?”

“It’s not that,” Armin sighed. “It just makes me feel weird to hear it like that, but I can’t think of a better way to say it. But I, I don’t even know if I’m right -- I don’t think I am.” Armin lifted her head to look him in the eye once more. “I think we’re close enough that this person would have figured it out by now, and told me, or at least have an inkling and maybe want to talk it out with me… Anyway, I don’t really know what I would do if I was right.” 

Levi squinted at her; slowly, his eyes widened like it was all coming together. Armin felt her heart thump in her chest, so hard, so loud she swore she could hear it. Suddenly, Levi blurted out, “Is it Eren?”

“What? No.” Armin laughed, partially out of nervousness, and partially because Levi was so close, and yet was completely off the mark. “I mean, Eren’s not really the macho-est of men, but I’m pretty sure he’s cis.”

“Hey, you never know. It could happen to anyone, right?” 

This time, Armin laughed with more enthusiasm, purely at the absurdity of this whole conversation. She’d only ever wanted to talk about the play, but here they were, talking about Armin’s wonderings about who that she knew might be trans, with Levi not even realising she was talking about _him_. 

“Yeah. It could,” Armin agreed, giggles still bubbling up from her belly. She swore she saw Levi smile momentarily, but she was laughing too much to be sure. 

“What were we talking about in the first place?” Levi asked. 

“Ah, Rocky Horror.”

\---

Eren settled himself behind the piano and warmed up his fingers, adjusting to the slightly different weight of the keys with something simple he played often. 

Mikasa set a stack of pages in front of him. “I don’t suppose you can play by sight?”

Eren shrugged. “I can only play about two songs by memory, and this is one of them. Sight is pretty much how I play everything.” 

“You’re not bad,” Mikasa said, watching his fingers move. He wasn’t particularly skilled in his posture or hand placement -- all those years of piano lessons when the two of them were young, lost in a single moment of impact, and Mikasa wouldn’t be surprised if Eren had only recently revisited the piano. “The music was arranged by my ex-pianist as part of his Special Studies; normally this song would have a few more instruments, but you’ll be carrying it all to keep the focus on me. I’m performing voice and a bit of violin.” 

Eren stretched out the accordion-folded sheet music. “Doesn’t seem too bad. Ah, whatsitcalled, tempo?” It wasn’t written anywhere on the music. 

Mikasa tapped on the side of the piano with her nails; Eren listened for a while, nodding his head, then set his fingers down and started to play. 

“This isn’t very… _old_ ,” Eren said, about halfway through his first run of the song. Even not being part of the music program, he’d heard things about the professors’ tastes. 

“Nor am I.” Mikasa’s advisor, in fact the very same man teaching her Rock History class, had approved it; he was perhaps the only professor in the department who didn’t insist on performing only songs older than dirt. 

What really interested Mikasa was that Eren hadn’t missed a note yet, not even while speaking, and even playing at full speed. “You’re really good.” 

“Thanks.” 

“You could be a musician.”

Eren laughed. “It’s not that hard of a song to play, Mikasa.” 

“This is the part where I’ll be playing violin.” Mikasa pointed to the page, where a tiny red line was drawn, and then at another place with another red line. “Here to here.” 

“Mm-hm.” Still, Eren hit every note. 

Mikasa stepped back. “Well. You know what you’re doing.” 

“I got you, sister.”


	45. Strike Up the Band and Make the Fireflies Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lacey panties and kissy-kissy. 99% makeouts and handjobs. 80% Intense Happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in a super cool coincidence, i graduated college on the two year anniversary of the first chapter of orange. 
> 
> title from “[kiss me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N-qO3sPMjc)” by sixpence none the richer.

Mikasa returned to her room in the early hours of Monday morning. She had been practicing with Eren for hours, honestly far too long, and the both of them would be feeling it during their 9AM Anatomy for the Artist class. 

Sasha was asleep in Mikasa’s bed, curled up tight around a pillow; she woke slightly when Mikasa got in next to her, but almost immediately fell right back asleep. 

Across town, Eren was just getting in to Levi’s apartment. It was around the time when Levi would wake up for a run; sure enough, when Eren knocked softly on the front door, Levi opened it. There was the slightest hint of stubble around his chin, which he would surely shave off after his run; he let Eren in, and then bid him goodbye, ready to go sweat in the early morning cold. 

Eren, too tired to walk any further and reluctant to wake Armin, just collapsed onto the couch. It was a comfortable enough couch, had one long cushion instead of three square ones like he was used to, and a few decently soft pillows at either end. He was asleep within minutes, too tired to stay awake any longer. 

Armin herself had slept well, after a nice long weekend of three musical performances, which were immensely tiring even if she was sitting for most of it. They were mentally taxing, more than physically so. 

She dreamt well, too, which was kind of new. 

Not entirely new to her life, but recently if Armin dreamed it was usually a nightmare, or otherwise somewhat unpleasant or just incredibly unsettling. One that stuck out to her had been what felt like hours, first with Armin and some faceless, nameless, gruff man breaking into a warehouse, only to find it full of tiny passages lines by neon lights. Eventually the passages led to an enormous subterranean room with white panel walls, seeming to go up and down infinitely. A not-quite-floor of that spinning chomper thing people on youtube liked to throw trash into to see how it got torn apart was below, and large concrete balls swinging from wires, and to finish it off, enormous white mannequins, smooth all over and at least fifty feet tall, usually larger, and animate, walking around the room, getting their heads blown off by the concrete pendulums and their feet chomped up by the floor and regrowing them. It wasn’t a nightmare, exactly; Armin didn’t feel like her dream self was ever in any immediate danger, not even when one of the giants seemed to stare right at her with its faceless head just before it got smashes to bits, but it was terrifying nonetheless. Thinking about it turned Armin’s stomach. 

But she wasn’t thinking now. Armin was asleep, and dreaming sweetly of floating on her back in the ocean, wearing a flowing white dress soaked to the skin, surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands of fish that seemed to swim up to her to bump against her in a hello, then dart back down into the depths, then return once more. Her hair, once more its natural golden-blonde, but silver catching moonlight, was fanned out around her head, longer than it had ever been. Her feet were bare, yet fingers and toes stayed smooth, not shrivelled in the extended soak. It was peaceful, serene; Armin felt safe, here at the surface, with the creatures of the sea seeming to want to protect her. 

Eventually the fish left -- not for good, though. Armin somehow knew they would be back. 

The moon in her dreams was full, and as it set, the sun rose. The sun shined down warm upon Armin’s face from the cloudless sky, keeping her comfortable even in the chilly water; a constant presence as she swayed gently rocked by the waves. Never did she burn; Armin’s skin, caressed gently by the sun, darkened slightly in a tan but did not turn red. Her hair shone gold, a halo. 

Sea animals attended to Armin once more, larger ones and just as many in number. Even the sharks were nothing but friendly, sniffing at Armin in their shark way; whales, impossibly huge, playfully sprayed water up to rain upon her, while dolphins swam under her and surfaced on either side, only to turn back and repeat the motion in the opposite direction. 

It was so peaceful, she almost didn’t want to leave. It wasn’t lonely, even, because anyone could find Armin here. If there was one thing she knew in this space it was that she was close to home, a real home with everyone Armin loved in it. 

Birds chirped overhead. They flew past, went distant, and then returned once again, circling lower and lower until Armin thought they must be nose to nose with her. 

And then she woke up. Slowly, with the morning sun streaming into the room but not yet hitting her eyes, Armin blinked and shifted, she stretched with a quiet moan. In the next room, a cell phone alarm beeped; probably Eren’s, Armin guessed, assuming he had come home the night before. 

Armin heard a groan, and it was definitely Eren’s voice. She turned onto her back and stretched again; Eren came in while she was mid-stretch and he watched her relax before smiling groggily and saying, “Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

“Did you sleep well?” 

“Like a log. Levi’s a good cuddler. How about you?”

Eren grimaced. “I got back maybe three hours ago.”

“Oh no…” 

“Mikasa kept saying I should go to bed, she could practice on her own, but I insisted and, well, here we are.” Eren yawned. “Should’ve just slept in our dorm, really. I could’ve gotten an extra hour.”

Armin gave him a pitying look. “Come here,” she said, holding out her arms. 

“If I get in bed I might fall back asleep.”

“I just want a kiss.” Armin sat up and threw her feet of the side of the bed, so when Eren did come over, he leaned over her to kiss her. First on the lips, then on each of her cheeks, and then little pecks peppered all over her face while she laughed and grabbed at his shirt. 

Finally, Eren tucked his head in next to Armin’s neck and took a deep breath. “I love you,” he whispered, as if it were a secret. News flash: it wasn’t. 

“I love you too.” 

“Did I ever tell you you’re adorable?”

“Frequently. Whatcha gonna do about it?” 

“Hmm.” Eren rested his right hand on Armin’s left knee, then crawled his fingers up her thigh. “I could…” 

Armin wiggled a bit. “You’d have to fast, we have class.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes!” 

“Awesome.” Eren continued to walk his fingers up her thigh, tickling the soft skin until he met the edge of her underwear. By that point Armin was squirming, biting her lip; there was already a lump forming under the fabric. 

“Eren, I said fast.”

“You can’t rush perfection.”

“Oh, so your handjobs are perfection now?” Armin teased. 

“Nope.” Eren kissed her nose. “You are.”

Armin went a little crossed eyed and smiled goofily at the compliment, simple and cheesy as it was, then gasped when Eren’s hand covered her crotch. He rubbed her slowly, gently; mostly with the palm of his hand cupped around her. Armin’s arms went around his neck, and she breathed harshly next to his ear. 

“Good?”

“Mm-hm.” She nodded; even little morning handjobs like this, with someone Armin loved, felt like utter bliss. “Love you.”

“Love you too.” Eren kissed Armin’s cheek, then nudged her face a little to kiss her lips. Their noses squished together, which was fine; they barely noticed. Eren hooked a finger over the top of Armin’s undies and pulled down, enough to expose her cock, which bounced a little upon being freed. He licked his palm, then grasped it more firmly and started to stroke her in earnest. 

This wasn’t the same kind of bliss Armin got in her dream. No, it was a far cry from the peaceful sway of the ocean and the gentle nudges of fish and other sea animals. But it was still a kind of peace, a moment where Armin didn’t have to think, only had to feel, and what she felt was incredible. She moaned when Eren’s hand touched her bare flesh; it was mostly dry and maybe an awkward angle but she only noticed the feel of skin on swollen skin, crying out when Eren’s lips brushed her neck and then suctioned onto the hollow above her collarbone. 

It wasn’t anything spectacular, but it felt like it was. And when Armin threw back her head and released onto her borrowed sleep shirt, neither she nor Eren noticed the bedroom door open until Levi said, “Having fun?”

Armin gasped and her arms tightened around Eren; only when Levi gave his signature nearly-smirk of not giving a fuck did she turn her head against Eren’s shoulder and laugh. 

“Put the shirt in the wash before you leave. I’m doing laundry today.” 

“Y-yeah,” Armin stammered. She couldn’t stop laughing, and Eren was doing the same. 

Levi shook his head. “Kids these days with their mutual masturbation…” He crossed the bedroom and gave a little wave before he entered the bathroom for his shower. “Don’t be late to class.” 

Armin snorted. She pulled away from Eren. “Want me to do you now?”

Eren shook his head. “I’m too tired to cum. Besides, we have to go soon.” He took a couple tissues from the nightstand and wiped Armin off. “Need help getting changed?” 

Armin rolled her eyes. “I got it.” She got off the bed and rifled through the drawer Levi had given her to store her clothes for the time being. “Um.”

“What is it?”

“I’m out of underwear.” She looked at Eren. “I brought all of it from our room, too. How did I not notice?”

“Do you want to borrow some of mine?” Eren asked. 

Armin shook her head. “They’ll be too big.” She got up and went to the door of the bathroom. “Hey Levi!” she shouted through the door. “I’m out of underwear, can I borrow yours?”

“ _Top drawer_ ,” came the response, slightly muffled by the shower.

She opened said drawer, and found all the underwear arranged neatly in several folded piles. Armin cocked her head to the side. “Mind if I take the frilly ones?”

“ _Go for it_.” 

Armin picked out a powder blue pair, soft at the crotch and kind of lacey everywhere else. “These are cute.” She slipped off her own underwear and put on Levi’s. “Oh. That feels nice.” They certainly weren’t anything Armin was used to -- her own underwear was pretty plain, mostly men’s size small briefs, maybe a cotton panty or two here and there that she’d bought off the internet in the last few months. 

Eren sat down on the bed, with his hand over his mouth like it would stop his head from exploding. His girlfriend was wearing his boyfriend’s cute frilly underwear. _This is fine_. 

Levi came out of the bathroom while Armin was looking for an outfit, having only felt the need for a relatively short shower this time. “Cute. You picked one of the silk ones.” He went to fetch his own underwear, nearly picking out the usual plain black shorts, but instead passed them over for the same pair as Armin was wearing, but in white, and tugged them up and over his butt. “Hmm. Been a while since I wore these.” He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, back and forth a few times, to get used to the feeling, which had the added very nice effect of tensing and relaxing his butt muscles. 

Turning around, Levi noticed Eren was beginning to look a bit… well he kind of looked like he was going to fall forward off the bed, less because he was tired and more because he could not support his own weight under the immense amount of _sexy_ that was his two partners. 

“Feeling left out?” Levi said. He tossed Eren a pair of lacey panties as well, not the same style but still silky between the legs, and in dark green. “There. Those are a little big on me so they should fit you.” 

Eren caught the underwear mostly with his face. Armin laughed at his stunned expression. 

...Eren didn’t think twice before stripping off his pants to change his underwear. 

\---

The panties were comfortable. 

Like, _really_ comfortable. 

Boner comfortable. 

It wasn’t Eren’s fault, honestly; the silk was so smooth, and it slid so nicely over his balls, and it just. Uuuuugh. It made it really hard to focus on his Anatomy for the Artist lecture about fat distribution on the back. Which sucked, because he was actually pretty interested in everything he’d learned in this particular class, this lecture included. Even if Keith Shadis was kind of harsh sometimes, he was a good professor. Eren didn’t hate him nearly as much as he had after the first few classes. And the material was right within what Eren needed to know to pursue illustration; it was everything he wanted to know about drawing the human body, and more. 

But: back to the point. 

Erection. 

At least Armin was having a similar problem in the next seat over. When she had first put the frilly underwear on, she assumed that the reason it felt so, um, stimulating, was because she’d just come herself and was overstimulated already. But the feeling hadn’t gone away; if anything it had gotten stronger, and now she was sporting her second hard-on of the day, only maybe a foot and a half from Eren’s. 

If only they were the kind of people to quietly and subtly jerk themselves or one another off in class, they might not have this problem. But they were not the sort of people. 

Annie, of course, was one such person; she even had a habit, apparently, of wearing a nearly silent butterfly-shaped vibrator on a harness to lectures. But Annie was in the front row and not actually dating either of them, and while she might have been very willing to give Armin a hand, she’d already had her experience with Eren and found it… well, too full of man. 

So Armin squirmed, and Eren twitched, and they both tried to stay as still as possible but somehow even the heartbeats throbbing through their nether regions were enough to shift the fabric just enough to gently caress swollen, heated skin. 

At the end of class, they both rushed out and, finding the nearest single-stall restroom, proceeded to, as quietly as possible, relieve one another. 

It wasn’t such a bad start to their Monday, all in all. 

The pair went to their dorm room before lunch. Armin checked: she really had brought all her underwear to Levi’s, and worn it all, in the past couple weeks. She wondered how in the hell she managed that, as she definitely had a month’s worth, but then she remembered: she usually changed it before bed, and after a shower, and seeing as she showered almost every morning now that she was around Levi she’d gotten in the habit of just changing her underwear every morning and night, which meant she went through it twice as fast. 

Eren changed his own, and then just sort of stared at the pair of borrowed undies in his hand, his face heating up. “I don’t know what to do with these.” 

Armin sighed. “I’ll take them back after lunch. Probably do laundry while I’m studying; I don’t think I can wear these much longer.” 

“Alright.” 

“Or, you could carry them around in your back pocket like a --”

“Like a douchebag who steals his girlfriend’s underwear after they fuck?” Eren shook his head. 

“I think Levi would appreciate it.” 

“He might, but that doesn’t mean I should.” 

Armin took the underwear; she folded it up and stuck it in her own back pocket. She looked at him expectantly. 

“No, I’m sorry, it isn’t hotter when you do it. You’re hot, but the underwear thing isn’t.”

Armin shrugged. She stuffed the underwear into her backpack instead and headed out the door to go to lunch. In the doorway, she stopped, and shivered. 

“You okay?” Eren asked. 

“Yeah,” Armin said. “Just… _really_ comfortable.”

\---

Levi had evidently let a cycle of laundry go through while he was teaching, and ran the dryer when he got back, which left Armin with clean, normal underwear. Fantastic. With that fiasco dealt with, and Levi painting (or staring intently at the canvas without moving for an extended period of time), Armin studied in the kitchen. 

Armin had readings for her evening class, Presidents’ Letters (or more accurately The Letters Of Various Leaders Of State, Mostly Elected -- but the class was called Presidents’ Letters, however inaccurate that may be) which she hadn’t yet done; also, she wanted to skim over the notes she’d made during her free moments over the weekend for her two morning classes the next day, since she remembered those readings only disjointedly. 

It wasn’t an unreasonable amount of work (at least, not for Armin, as she found reading for class pretty easy, and there were certain people who were varying levels of jealous about this) so by the time she was done, she still had some time left before she had to leave for her dinner work shift in the dining hall. Armin packed up her things and stretched, yawning wide, thinking of what to do before she left. 

In the end, Levi called her over. “Can you give me a critique?” He seemed, as much as Armin could tell, a little embarrassed to be asking. 

“Um, sure. But I don’t know if I’ll be much help.” 

“You will,” Levi assured. 

Armin stared at the painting for a while, standing next to Levi who hand his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. The painting itself was, as far as Armin could tell, perfect. The technical skill Levi put into it was incredible; the figure was photo-perfect. She couldn’t see anything wrong with the proportions with which Eren was painted, and all the colours blended well together. The fine detail was evident and seamless. It looked, for all intents and purposes, finished. “I can’t find a single thing wrong with it.”

“Then what’s right?” 

Armin told him her thoughts, and added, “I think you captured Eren better than the photos did.” 

“It’s not… weighted weirdly?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Is there a place that seems empty, or a place that seems like too much is going on?” 

Armin stared at the piece again. “Not really? I guess, the wall and floor seem a little more solid than Eren does, so they have more weight than him, but it’s pretty balanced.”

“Aaah shit.” 

“Th-that’s not a bad thing!” Armin waved her hands, ready to take back what she’d said. 

“No, it is, and I see what you mean. He’s not grounded enough.” Levi ran his finger about an inch below Eren’s body. “It doesn’t really look like he’s laying on the ground, more like he’s floating in space. It’s probably the shadow. Thanks, I’ve been staring at this for days trying to figure out why I hated it.” 

“Oh. No problem. I didn’t do much.” 

“You saved my painting. That’s a lot.” Levi started to thin out the necessary colours. “I usually do close-ups, so I’m not used to grounding being an issue. I thought it was kind of top-heavy, but that didn’t make sense.” 

Armin rested her chin on Levi’s shoulder. “When are you going to start painting me?” 

Levi looked at her out the corner of his eye. “Friday, I’ll take your pictures. How’s that?” 

“Sounds good to me.” 

He ran a clean hand through her hair, then placed it on her cheek and pulled Armin close to smooch her other cheek. It made her smile; she turned and kissed Levi back. 

“Is the paint dry?” Armin asked. 

“More or less.”

“Can I touch?” 

“...Carefully. Be gentle.” 

Armin reached out a finger and poked (gently) at Eren’s painted flaccid penis. 

A few miles away, in the middle of his Digital Art class, the real Eren tried to discreetly scratch his balls, to fight off a sudden intense tingly feeling. Was it related? The world may never know. 

Levi shook his head. “Or course. Should I have expected anything else?” 

“I’m not so obvious.”

“You’re not?” Levi teased. 

“Hey! You… butt.” 

“I’m a butt?” Levi asked, faking incredulity. “I’m a _butt_?” He circled his arm around Armin’s waist and very suddenly picked her up and put her over his shoulder. 

“Aaaaa put me down!” Armin screeched, high-pitched. 

Levi did put her down, but not before carrying her halfway across the room to the couch. He set Armin down on the seat and leaned over her, kissing her gently. She kissed him back immediately, with a little more vigor. 

When Levi pulled back, Armin repeated her insult: “You’re a butt.”

“You just kissed this butt. Does that make you a buttface?”

“No. You’re the buttface.”

“I’m a buttface? I thought I was just a butt.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive,” Armin insisted. 

“I see.” Levi nodded slowly, as Armin had given him some sage advice upon the nature of butts and buttfaces. 

Armin burst into laughter; Levi leaned forward and smushed his face against the couch above her shoulder, shaking from his own withheld giggles. “Nuh-uh,” Armin said, pushing him back. “Let me see you laugh.” 

Levi looked ridiculous. It wasn’t just that he was still kinda orange and his hat was lopsided; mostly it was his expression, his lips pressed together in a tight line, eyes wide and watery, trying his very best not to laugh. Suddenly he couldn’t hold it in any longer; a loud snort preceded a series of gasping laughs, and he tried to lower his head but Armin grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her while he spluttered out more laughter than he’d shown freely in years. 

Most people might have thought, wow, that’s a fucking ugly laugh. And they would be right. But Armin was too excited to see him smile so openly to even notice he kind of sounded like he was choking. He wasn’t choking, he just sounded like it. 

His laughter beginning to die down, Levi leaned forward and started kissing Armin’s face, to which she squealed a little and then started laughing once more. “Why --”

Levi cut off Armin with a quick kiss to her lips, then went back to kissing every inch of her he could reach. Eren had done the same thing in the morning. 

“Why do you two keep doing this?” Armin asked, half a whine, though she didn’t mind at all. 

“Because you’re delicious.” Levi licked her neck to emphasize this. 

“Eep!”

“Mm. Sweet.” He licked her again, then began to suck a mark into Armin’s neck, just above the light one Eren had left earlier in the morning. 

Armin’s face bloomed bright red. She closed her eyes and sank back into the sofa, letting Levi do what he wanted. After he was satisfied with the mark he’d made, he left open-mouth wet kisses all over Armin’s neck. 

His back started to ache from the awkward position, standing in front of Armin and bent forward over her, so Levi dropped one knee to the couch, then the other, on Armin’s either side. His chest pressed against hers; her hands went to his hips, and she could feel the exact moment he started to make little gyrating motions, which he was obviously trying to hold back. 

Levi backed away from her neck for a moment to kiss her lips, deeply, deeper, and then he broke off once more. Armin followed him for another kiss, and when he moved back again, she tried to go for his neck, but he held her back. 

“Just…” he whispered, gently pushing her back into the sofa. “Let me.” 

Armin smiled. “Yeah,” she whispered, just as quiet. “Okay.” 

Levi went for the other side of her neck this time, alternating light kisses with long sucks, occasionally dipping lower to her collar. 

Armin opened the top two buttons of her shirt; if Levi wanted more, he would have to go for it himself. But he did make use of the newly uncovered skin, with more kisses as low as he could go, one hand gently kneading at the side of Armin’s throat. 

Armin’s breath was coming loud, harsh, alongside the rustle of clothing and the sound of Levi’s lips touching all over her neck and shoulders. Here and there, a quiet moan or whimper rose from her throat. 

“Did you plan this?” Armin asked. 

“Nope. I rarely plan sex.” 

_Sex_. Levi was going there. Armin’s heart rate sped up. “So you just decided, hnfuck --” Armin gasped when Levi bit her collarbone “-- hey, I’m gonna lick Armin’s neck for, for half an hour.”

“Hasn’t been so long. But I can go longer.” Levi kissed her lips again, and when he broke away he chanced a look down, surprised not by the erection in his lap but the lack of one in Armin’s. “Oh. Are you not…?”

Armin looked down as well. “Ah. I, well, I’ve already come twice today, so.” She nudged Levi’s nose with her own. “I am enjoying it.” Her hand came away from his hip to hover over his crotch. “I can--”

“No.” Levi grabbed her wrist, and slowly brought her hand up to his lips. He kissed Armin’s palm. “If we’re going to do it, at least the first time, we should do it together. So not now.” He put her hand on the back of his head and kissed her again. Armin sort of wished he had a decent amount of hair for her to grab hold of; truth be told, Levi wanted her to pull his hair too. 

Someday, when Levi’s hair grew back out, he’d ask her to do it. And Armin would happily oblige. 

Now, though, Armin ran her hair up the back of Levi’s head, against the grain of what was once an undercut and was now the same stubbly hair growth as the rest of his head. He shivered, as her fingers trailed over the top of his spine and the sensitive back of his head. 

“Armin,” Levi called, and rather than the higher pitch Armin had come to expect of Levi when he was turned on, his voice rumbled gravelly and low enough Armin felt she would sink through the floor to reach it. His lips had barely left hers, but he opened his eyes just slightly and Armin was certain he was about to give her the kiss to end all kisses. 

Levi did not disappoint. He kissed her hard enough that it almost hurt, hovering somewhere between pleasure and pain as his tongue, practiced with the years, touched against hers and then drew back to coax hers forward. He sucked on her lips, on her tongue, bit her lower lip and all the while ran his hands over Armin’s cheeks, her neck, her chest, whatever he could reach. Levi kissed Armin like he was hungry, and Armin wasn’t even sure what she’d done to deserve it. 

Armin was completely engulfed in the deluge of Levi’s attention. It was only when he leaned away, the both of them breathing hard, Levi clearly intending to dive right back in one his lightheadedness cleared, that Armin noticed a quiet _ping!_ from across the room. 

“D-damn.” 

“Yeah.” Levi grinned and leaned in again, but Armin held him back. 

“No…” 

“What?” Levi’s grin dropped, and he immediately searched her face, trying to see if he’d hurt her somehow. 

“That alarm…” Armin smiled apologetically. “I have to go. I have work.”

Levi sighed in relief. “Oh god. I thought I...” He trailed off, not sure how to finish that sentence. 

“I want to stay. But I have to.” 

Levi looked conflicted; his brain was churning, trying to figure out how to get her to stay, throwing out scenarios like _Call in sick, how much do you make? I’ll give you twice that, you won’t lose anything_ and realising Armin would be _pissed_ if he offered that. “Yeah. Okay.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be. I, I should have known.”

“I enjoyed this though.” Armin kissed him again, and she could feel in his tension how much he was holding back from completely devouring her once more. “More when we get back?” 

“You have class.”

“I… yeah. I’ll be tired after that.” 

“How about tomorrow?”

Armin smiled. “Look at you, _planning sex_.”

“I said rarely, not never.” Levi got off of Armin’s lap, sitting on the open space next to her on the sofa. 

Armin stared at Levi for a moment, then smiled and stretched. 

“Want a ride?” Levi asked. 

“Hm?”

“I can kiss you for another fifteen minutes and then take you down there on my bike.” 

“Much as I love your motorcycle, I probably _shouldn’t_ look like I just got fucked before a dining hall shift,” Armin reasoned. 

“That’s a good point.” Levi breathed in deep. “I’ll walk with you?” 

“Sounds good to me.” Armin gestured towards his crotch. “Maybe not with that, though.” 

Levi shrugged. “It’ll go down. Let’s go.” 

\---

It was just Armin’s luck that she and Levi arrived at Shiga house at the same time as some of her friends. 

“Armin!” Jean called. “And Mister Levi!” 

Levi yanked his hand away from Armin -- or tried to, but Armin held on to him. “Jean knows,” she whispered to Levi, who seemed to be experiencing some sort of temporary brain malfunction. 

Jean came closer, and Levi scowled at him. “Just ‘Levi’ is fine.”

“Right,” Jean said. “You’re basically family, right?” 

Armin flinched, for Jean’s sake. She wasn’t sure how Levi would react to something like that. “Um.” 

Levi’s brain malfunction extended its duration; he blinked owlishly, if owls had very narrow eyes, at Jean, not really even sure how he himself would react to hearing a student he barely knew call him family. “What.”

“Or not. Whatever.” Jean looked less and less sure of himself as the moments passed, until he suddenly started to turn away. “I’m going inside. Later.” He walked off, his brain playing a mantra of _I fucked up again, I fucked up again, I fucked up again_.

“He’s… well.” Armin tried to explain. “Everyone in Anatomy for the Artist, honestly, and some more people too but, they’re all our friends, so they all pretty much know what’s going on with you and me and Eren.” 

“Good to know.” Levi still looked a little stunned. “I should probably go.”

“Yeah… you haven’t painted at all today, have you?”

“Shit. No. I’ll go do that.” 

Armin nodded. “One more kiss, for the road?” 

Levi glanced around, self-conscious once again. Fuck, he thought he’d decided he wasn’t going to freak out about this shit anymore. “Yeah. One more.” He let Armin lead this time; her kiss was short, and sweet, and _not enough_. He wanted to finish what they’d started earlier, and do it over and over. 

\---

Armin was warm. 

She recognised her clothes; the same white dress from her ocean dream, made of thin, flowing fabric, but now dry, fanned around her as she lay on grass. Her hair, long and braided, lay next to her head. 

And she was warm. 

Sunlight streamed down upon her, but it was somehow different from the sunlight over the ocean. It was constant, unmoving. Below her, the ground, also constant, unmoving. Flowers grew, faster than real time, covering her millimeter by millimeter. 

To her left was a stream. It was just wide enough that she wouldn’t be able to jump across it; she could easily wade through it, though, and the current was slow. Eventually, it would join with many other streams to feed a large river. 

To her right, a cliff. The drop was not far, less than her own height in fact. Likely there were more similar short falls below, but she couldn’t know, because everything below was obscured by fog. 

She had to make a choice here. The water was familiar; water always was. But there were risks in familiarity, like becoming too comfortable, and letting the current sweep you away. The cliff was unknown. Perhaps the first drop was short, but after that, infinite. She couldn’t know unless she jumped -- but the rewards could be immeasurable. 

If she didn’t choose, she would have to stay here. Stagnant. On the hard ground, slowly becoming part of the earth. It would be okay, but not fantastic. 

She opened her eyes. The burbling of the steam, and the gentle hiss of mist, faded away. The sun, directly overhead, shone into her eyes until a cloud passed by, obscuring it. 

Armin realised, there was another option. 

There is always up. 

She rose from the ground, slowly, pulled first by her midsection as if on a climbing harness. Armin’s dress trailed below her; the ribbon in her hair came undone, and her braid unraveled. 

Slowly, Armin too began to unravel. 

Her dress was pulled askew by the wind until it became the wind itself, fading into translucent threads and then nothing at all; her skin, her bones, began to strip away, leaving behind only light as her physical body turned to vapour. 

Up. Of course. 

There is always up. 

\---

After dinner on Tuesday, Mikasa took her usual route to the theatre building. It was only when she entered an empty, darkened stage that she realised -- no more rehearsals. 

She sat down on the edge of the stage and laughed. Mikasa was sure she seemed ridiculous, laughing alone in a dark theatre, but here she was. She didn’t even have her bag with her. 

The same door she had just come in opened once more. 

“Mikasa?” 

Mikasa turned to see Sasha, backlit by the hall lights. 

“It’s… empty… Oh!” 

“I made the same mistake,” Mikasa said. “Come here, sit down.” 

Sasha sat beside her. “I completely forgot it was over.” 

“Yeah.”

“The crew cleaned up fast.” 

“They did.” Mikasa leaned to the side, against Sasha’s shoulder, snorting one more laugh. “I can’t believe this. We both forgot we didn’t have to come here anymore.” 

“Is that a bad thing?” 

“I don’t think so. Just kind of funny.” 

They sat there for a while, until their eyes adjusted to the dark; the only light came from the exit signs, so when they could see, everything was bathed in a dim red light. All the empty seats, the shiny-clean stage, and each other. 

“What a weird play,’ Sasha mumbled. 

“You just now noticed?”

“No, I knew. It’s just really hitting me now.” Sasha laughed. “I think Jean got my first kiss.” 

“Oh my god. I’m so sorry.” Mikasa took Sasha’s hand, hoping to comfort her. 

“It’s fine. I forgave him, you know? He didn’t know what he was saying, and now he’s trying to do better.” 

“Hmm.” Mikasa understood that, but she also was one of those people who generally found it very hard to forgive anyone, no matter if they deserved forgiveness or not. At this point, she tolerated Jean, had more or less forgiven him because everyone else had (save for Eren, who had not in the first place been in a state of non-animosity towards Jean), but couldn’t stop the little bit of anger she held towards him for hurting some of her closest friends, even if he was also one of her closest friends. 

“Who was your first kiss?” Sasha asked. “Someone in the show?”

“Sort of. I think it was Armin.”

“Huh…?” Sasha was confused. Armin wasn’t supposed to kiss anyone in the show. 

“Years ago,” Mikasa explained. “Her first kiss was Eren, actually. She says they were really young, maybe four or five. Kids do that stuff, I guess. And I was… maybe twelve, or so, and she asked me if I’d ever kissed anyone, and if I wanted to kiss her.”

“How was it?”

“Really weird. I’m ace, she’s not into girls -- it was weird all around.” 

“Did she know, then?” Sasha asked. She explained: “I mean, that she’s a girl.”

“She says she always knew. I didn’t know I was ace yet; I didn’t know it was possible. Actually, because I thought she was a boy, after we kissed and we didn’t like it I ended up assuming we were both hella gay.” 

“Really?”

Mikasa nodded. “I was the school lesbian for years. She always said she wasn’t gay, and I was so confused because she clearly liked men -- now I know what she meant.” 

“So, what made you figure out you were asexual?”

“Internet. Just, found out it was a thing from some forum, and I remembered how I wasn’t into kissing, never got crushes on anyone, and I figured that must be me. Same with being aromantic. I just was never interested in any of that stuff.” 

“Oh.” 

“Something wrong?” Mikasa thought Sasha seemed kind of down, from the town of her voice. 

“I don’t know.” Sasha sighed. “Maybe I’m not ace. I mean, I guess, I kind of… liked kissing? It wasn’t bad.” 

“There’s more than one way to be ace.” 

“Huh?”

“That’s where I started, but it’s not how I think about it now. Some of us like kissing. Maybe I would under certain circumstances. Some asexuals even like sex. But that’s not what being ace is about. It’s about whether you can look at someone and think, you know what I want to do? Fuck them.” Mikasa shifted to look at Sasha. “I’ve never felt that way about anyone. As for sex itself, I’m not grossed out by it, but the idea of me doing it… I don’t know, it doesn’t appeal to me. But that’s just me. Some aces actively seek out sex, but it’s not about the person they’re doing it with. And, with being aromantic, it’s like that but with love. You can date someone, really like them, but you don’t generally just decide from meeting someone that right away, you want to date them.”

“Okay. I guess I am ace then.” Sasha hesitated. “I don’t think I’m aro though. There was a… demi? Demiromantic? I think I’m that.”

“Cool.”

“I’d date Krista.” 

Mikasa couldn’t help it; she laughed. “You had an enormous crush on her.”

“Was it obvious?”

“Yeah, it really was.” 

“She’s a goddess, though.” Sasha looked kind of dreamy-eyed. Between the darkness of the room and the darkness of Sasha’s skin, Mikasa couldn’t tell, but she was pretty sure Sasha was blushing. 

“You’re not wrong. Sorry to say, I don’t think it would work out though.”

“Why not?” Sasha asked, mostly joking. “Eren and Armin are dating Levi.”

“That’s true, but Krista’s married, and I’m pretty sure she and Ymir aren’t polyamorous.”

“I’d date you.” 

The theatre was very, very quiet. The air conditioning turned on, and Mikasa’s ears trained on the whooshing of air through old vents. She shivered as the temperature dropped. 

“I know you don’t want to,” Sasha said. “That’s fine. I just wanted you to know.”

“Okay.” 

“It started as a squish, you know? I just wanted to be your friend. And then at some point it turned into. Um.” She fidgeted, clenching and unclenching her hands. “I’m sorry.” 

“You don’t need to be sorry. I’m… really touched, actually.” 

“Oh.” 

“Most people who have crushes on me just think I’m pretty, and when they get to know me it goes away. But you actually got to know me first. So I appreciate it.” 

Sasha smiled, but it wasn’t a totally happy smile. Part of her still felt insecure about saying anything in the first place. And yet, there was something else trying to burst out of her. 

“Hey…” Mikasa caught sight of Sasha’s expression. “Is there something wrong?” 

“N-no.” 

“You can be honest with me.”

“Promise you won’t get mad?” 

It broke Mikasa’s heart to see Sasha so insecure. “I don’t make promises, but I don’t think I’ll get mad. Not at you.” 

Sasha squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe if she didn’t look at Mikasa, she could say it. “Can I kiss you?” 

“Huh?”

“I know -- I know you don’t like it, and we already sort of did, for the play, but I was wondering what it would be like if it was just… for us. Um. Never mind.” She opened her eyes, but still couldn’t meet Mikasa’s. “Forget I asked. I’m sorry.” 

“Okay.” 

Sasha relaxed, until she felt Mikasa’s hand on her cheek. “What?”

“I said okay. I’ll kiss you, if you want me to.” 

“But you don’t.” 

“No, I don’t want to. But I also don’t… not want to.” Mikasa brushed Sasha’s hair back with her free hand. “I don’t know if it’ll be any different for me. But if you want me to, I will.” 

Sasha felt like a deer caught in headlights; kind of looked like one, with her wide eyes reflecting the little light in the room. This was what she wanted, but she never, ever thought she would have a chance at getting it. And probably, it would never happen again. Would it be better to do it, just this once -- or to never do it at all? 

“Sasha?” 

“Okay.” She swallowed her fear and closed her eyes. “Kiss me.” 

The first thing Sasha noticed was Mikasa’s smell, as she moved close. It was a familiar one; they’d been sleeping in the same bed for most of the semester, so Sasha was surprised she noticed it at all. But it smelled like home. Who knew a person could smell like home? 

Then, she noticed Mikasa’s fingers, moving slightly against her cheek, relocating slightly as the angles of their bodies changed. Mikasa’s fingers were rough, callused from years of fencing ambidextrous, of playing string instruments, of lifting weights, but they were gentle on Sasha’s skin. Mikasa knew her strength, knew it very well, and knew how to put it away when she needed to. 

Finally, Sasha felt Mikasa’s lips against hers. She gasped through her nose, and the breath she released a few moments later was shaky. Sasha wasn’t sure this was real -- could it just be a dream? -- but when she realised that light pressure against her lips wasn’t going away, she was able to relax and let the air move through her normally, in and out her nose while her mouth was occupied. Sasha tried to compare it to the messy kisses they’d shared for the Rocky Horror Show, paired up as Columbia and Eddie, or any of the others who had to suck face. That had been awkward and sloppy; not bad, just awkward. Kind of thrilling, really. 

But this was just… soft. Thrilling, too, but in a different way. Closed lips, no tongues, no teeth, no exchange of saliva. It was… nice. 

For Sasha. 

Mikasa ended the kiss. She leaned away, opened her eyes, watched Sasha stay perfectly still for a few silent heartbeats. Then Sasha sucked in a deep breath. 

“How was that?” Mikasa asked.

“Good,” Sasha breathed. “You?”

“Wet,” Mikasa said honestly. It wasn’t so much, just a little, but that was all she really noticed. 

“I have to go,” Sasha said suddenly. 

And she got up and ran. 

“Sasha!” Mikasa called out. She scrambled to go after her, but by the time she got to the door, Sasha was already around the corner, and Mikasa didn’t even know which way she’d gone. 

“Fuck!” Mikasa shouted. She sank down to the floor once more, knowing she’d made a mistake, but not knowing if making the opposite choice would have turned out any different. “Fuck,” She repeated, and put her head in her hands. 

Her phone buzzed in her pocket; when Mikasa pulled it out, she noticed the screen was cracked. Must have happened just a moment before, when she sat down hard on it. A text from Eren showed when she unlocked it. 

_U coming to practice?_

Right. She was supposed to practice with him for her first year Music major performance. That was why she was down by this end of campus in the first place; music was the next building. 

_Be there soon._

Mikasa took a deep breath, unsure if she would even be able to sing. It was Sasha’s song after all, the one Sasha had recommended at the beginning of the semester. 

And, all hell to it, the song was about kissing. 

“You look like hell,” were Eren’s first words when Mikasa entered their reserved music room. Eren didn’t usually tell her such things, so it must have been worse than usual. “What happened?”

“Think I fucked things up with Sasha,” she said. 

“Shit.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. If I cry today, just. Let me.” 

“Okay.” Eren was a little scared. He hadn’t seen Mikasa cry, ever. Not even when they were kids, and he’d first met her, just after her parents had been murdered before her eyes. But tonight, her eyes were watery. “She’s really important to you, isn’t she?”

“You have no idea.” 

At first Eren wanted to push back. He had people who meant the world to him, after all. Mikasa was one of them; Armin and Levi, too. But, he realised, he _didn’t_ understand. Mikasa and Sasha’s relationship was something that made sense to him only in theory. It wasn’t something he would ever experience -- _queerplatonic_ was the word Mikasa used, and his understanding was it was something only asexual people had. Maybe he was wrong about that, but from what Mikasa explained of it, Eren was certain if he ever got into such a relationship, eventually it would turn romantic, or it would end. 

In fact, he realised, his and Armin’s relationship had been a lot like that for most of their lives. Sharing a bed, sharing a life, looking at each other like they were the sun, but being friends at the end of the day. And it did turn romantic. It wasn’t that it was unfulfilling to either of them; that was just how it naturally progressed for Eren and Armin. 

But for Mikasa and Sasha, that was the end point of their relationship. That was their terminal velocity. And it was just as important, just as intense, just as _much_ as what Eren had with Armin, but it was different. 

Mikasa didn’t want to talk about it. Eren would respect that. But it pulled at his heart strings to see his sister so obviously heartbroken. 

Maybe it was meddling. But he had to do something. He had to bring them back together, especially if Sasha was as torn up about it as Mikasa was. 

Eren was no empath. That was all Mikasa’s thing. But if he knew anything about them, he knew Sasha was hurting too. And he knew Sasha would want their relationship back as much as Mikasa so clearly did.


	46. Parachutes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The worst would be to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title comes from [parachutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v77WFwYtUE0) by coldplay.

“How was it?” Eren asked over breakfast Wednesday morning. A breakfast which he had made, insisted on it, despite what little sleep he had gotten. There were bags under his eyes; he was up for the third night in a row helping Mikasa practice, and this time half of it had been consoling her when he couldn’t just sit by and listen to her voice break while she tried so hard not to cry. So when he asked his question, he was a little less enthusiastic than usual. 

“How was what?” Levi asked.

“You know.” Eren looked between Levi, who was fully awake, and Armin, who was still in her sleep shirt and yawning. 

“Oh. That.” Levi glanced at Armin. “We never got around to it.”

“Does he mean sex?” Armin asked, sleepy-slurring a bit so it came out as _’z he mmn sex_. She cleared her throat and confirmed, “Yeah, we didn’t.” 

“Oh,” Eren said, confused. “I thought you would. You planned it, right?”

“Yes, but we weren’t feeling into it.” Armin yawned again, then stuck toast in her mouth. 

“Plans change.” Levi shrugged. 

“Oh. You just seem kind of all over each other lately. I’m surprised you didn’t do anything.” 

Armin and Levi looked at each other. Levi said, “We cuddled.” 

“Was nice,” Armin mumbled, covering her mouth to avoid see-food.

“Okay.” Eren ate a little, then asked another question. “Did planning it make it less exciting?” 

Levi raised an eyebrow. Armin shook her head. “No,” they said in unison, but with different inflections. Levi seemed confused that Eren could even ask such a thing; Armin was amused, said it while laughing a little. 

“I mean, I was excited,” Armin said. “But when I got home, it was like, I just wrote a response to a lecture about mass beheadings. I’m not in the mood anymore.” 

“And I was just tired.” Levi cocked his head. “These old bones can’t keep up with me.”

“You’re not old,” Armin said. 

“Thirty,” Levi said, pointing to himself. He then pointed at Armin and said, “Nineteen.”

“I’m eighteen, actually.” 

There was a silence of several seconds. 

“Eighteen?!” Levi said, quite loudly. “But!” He pointed at Eren. “You’re _twenty_!”

Eren nodded. “I missed a year of school after the accident. Between the time I was in the hospital, and the time it took me to get back to where I was. I was a year ahead of Mikasa and Armin before that.” 

“But that’s _one year_. And isn’t Mikasa nineteen?” 

“I entered school early,” Armin explained. “I guess we should all be in different years, but we’re not.” 

“Actually, Armin could’ve skipped a year,” Eren bragged. 

“Yeah, if I hadn’t failed P.E. so many times.” Armin was good at running, and decently coordinated, but had a low pain tolerance and not much physical strength, which meant for most of her life she was afraid of getting hit by whatever round instrument of torture was the object of the game of the week. “Besides, I didn’t want to leave you and Mikasa behind.”

Throughout this conversation, Levi’s head had slowly migrated into the protective shell of his hands. “ _Eighteen_ ,” he whispered. 

“It’s one year,” Armin said. “I’m still an adult.” 

Levi lifted his head, dragging his hands down his face. It was not an attractive look. “Eighteen,” he repeated. “Okay. Okay. Eighteen.” 

“Do you want to change the subject?” Armin asked. 

“Yes please,” came a mumbled response. 

“How’s practicing with Mikasa?” Armin asked Eren. 

“Oh.” The growing smile melted from Eren’s face. He scratched his head, not sure how much he should reveal. There were no secrets between himself, Mikasa, and Armin, but Levi wasn’t necessarily part of that particular group. Still, Mikasa had trusted him with a lot already. With Armin’s life, for one. That had to count for something. “Um, not bad but, Mikasa and Sasha had a… thing. A fight. I think Mikasa blames herself, and it’s really messing her up. But… they won’t talk.” 

“Oh no…” Armin chewed on her lip, her brain already running a million scenarios of how to help them sort it out. She knew that Mikasa and Sasha were so important to each other, and had been nearly inseparable the last few months. “What should we do?” she whispered, mostly talking to herself. 

“Do you know what it was about?” Levi asked. “That might help.”

Eren shook his head. “She won’t tell me.” It didn’t go against their _no secrets_ thing, and he knew that. It was just that -- “Mikasa gets… choked up whenever she tries.” 

“Choked up?” Armin repeated. “Like… Crying?” 

Eren slowly nodded. “Yeah. There were a few tears.”

“I’ve never seen her cry before,” Armin said, stunned. 

“Neither have I.”

“Not even… when you met her?” Armin didn’t know the full details of that situation; Mikasa and Eren were willing to tell her, of course, but she said she didn’t want to know. Still, she knew their meeting had been just after Mikasa’s parents died. And yet… 

“Not even then.” 

“She didn’t… she didn’t even cry after your accident,” Armin said, and she knew it for a fact. Mikasa had held back tears to the point that her eyelids and cheeked had swelled up with the effort, but she hadn’t shed a single one. Armin had cried for the both of them. 

Eren ran his fingers through his hair, mostly blond with an inch of natural roots showing, the blue dye faded. “I know,” he said. He’d seen her, face swelled up with repressed tears, and he hadn’t understood at the time but since then, Eren asked her if she really cried for him and her answer had been, _Almost_. Anyone else might have been offended, but Eren wasn’t. He knew Mikasa just wasn’t that kind of person. She just didn’t get to the point of crying -- got close, rarely, but never quite there. The fact that she got so close to crying, for Eren, showed how much she really did care. 

But now she had cried. Mikasa only shed a few tears; mostly she’d sobbed, she’d panicked, her voice broke. She’d taken harsh, uneven breaths on the verge of hyperventilation. She’d clung to Eren as soon as his arms were around her. Mikasa didn’t truly cry until her face was buried in Eren’s neck, his shirt clutched in her hand and pressed against one eye. When she stopped, and backed away, there were barely any tears dampening his shirt, just tiny little spots where off-white turned to light gray. Her makeup hadn’t even run, though her face was splotchy-flushed showing through the foundation. But it was enough, for a girl who never cried. 

“We have to help her. Help both of them.” Armin looked down at her plate, suddenly no longer sure if she was still hungry, but she picked at her food anyway. Just before biting into a bit of over-easy egg, Armin said, “If only we knew what happened.”

\---

 _After dinner on Tuesday,_ Sasha took her usual route to the theatre building.

It was quiet, much quieter than she was used to, but Sasha didn’t really think about it. She passed one room with a class starting up, then one more, before reaching the stage where the Rocky Horror Show practiced. 

When she opened the door, it was dark; the lights from the hall illuminated a lone figure seated on the stage, chuckling quietly to herself. 

“Mikasa?” 

Mikasa turned to see Sasha, backlit by the hall lights. 

“It’s… empty… Oh!” Sasha realised, at that moment, that the show was over. Rehearsal was over. She was suddenly terribly embarrassed. 

“I made the same mistake,” Mikasa said. “Come here, sit down.” 

Despite her embarrassment, Sasha came in. She let the door close behind her, and sat beside Mikasa at the edge of the stage. Sasha laughed nervously, hoping it wasn’t obvious. “I completely forgot it was over.” 

“Yeah.” Mikasa was, as usual, unreadable. 

“The crew cleaned up fast,” Sasha said, trying to make conversation. It always felt like effort at first, because Mikasa just wasn’t used to talking a lot, but once they got going it was natural, like they were born to talk to each other forever. 

“They did.” Mikasa leaned to the side, against Sasha’s shoulder, snorting out a laugh. “I can’t believe this. We both forgot we didn’t have to come here anymore.” 

“Is that a bad thing?” Sasha felt her embarrassment ramp up about two thousand percent. 

“I don’t think so. Just kind of funny.” 

Sasha breathed out slowly. Mikasa didn’t judge her at all. It was okay. 

They sat there for a while, until their eyes adjusted to the dark; the only light came from the exit signs, so when they could see, everything was bathed in a dim red light. All the empty seats, the shiny-clean stage, and each other. 

“What a weird play,” Sasha mumbled, referring to the show they’d just performed three times that weekend. 

“You just now noticed?”

“No, I knew. It’s just really hitting me now.” Sasha laughed. “I think Jean got my first kiss.” 

“Oh my god. I’m so sorry.” Mikasa took Sasha’s hand, hoping to comfort her. 

“It’s fine. I forgave him, you know? He didn’t know what he was saying, and now he’s trying to do better.” She meant it. Sasha wasn’t usually big on forgiveness; she’d been hurt too many times. But when someone showed real remorse and, not only that, also actively tried to fix their mistakes without putting any of the burden for it on those they’d hurt… well, she respected that. And if there was one constant in Jean’s ever-changing self, it was that he prided himself on his dignity, and defined dignity as _being a decent fucking person_ (his words). 

“Hmm.” 

Sasha had a feeling it was harder for Mikasa to forgive, but was also pretty sure she still had. It was hard to really hate Jean (unless, of course, you were Eren.)

“Who was your first kiss?” Sasha asked. “Someone in the show?”

“Sort of. I think it was Armin.”

“Huh…?” Sasha was confused. Armin, as the Usherette, wasn’t supposed to kiss anyone… 

“Years ago,” Mikasa explained. “Her first kiss was Eren, actually. She says they were really young, maybe four or five. Kids do that stuff, I guess. And I was… maybe twelve, or so, and she asked me if I’d ever kissed anyone, and if I wanted to kiss her.”

“How was it?” Sasha asked, curious. She didn’t really think Mikasa would have kissed anyone on her own time; she assumed maybe it would have been someone in the show she’d done in the fall, or another one from high school. 

“Really weird. I’m ace, she’s not into girls -- it was weird all around.” 

“Did she know, then?” Sasha asked. She explained: “I mean, that she’s a girl.”

“She says she always knew. I didn’t know I was ace yet; I didn’t know it was possible. Actually, because I thought she was a boy, after we kissed and we didn’t like it I ended up assuming we were both hella gay.” 

“Really?” It was sort of funny to Sasha, but more than that it was surprising. Mikasa seemed so sure of herself, all the time; the idea that she ever had to go through a period of uncertainty, of self-questioning, seemed absurd. 

Mikasa nodded. “I was the school lesbian for years. She always said she wasn’t gay, and I was so confused because she clearly liked men -- now I know what she meant.” 

“So, what made you figure out you were asexual?”

“Internet. Just, found out it was a thing from some forum, and I remembered how I wasn’t into kissing, never got crushes on anyone, and I figured that must be me. Same with being aromantic. I just was never interested in any of that stuff.” 

“Oh.” It came out sad, because in the split-second after Mikasa had said all that, Sasha realised it wasn’t her. Not at all. 

“Something wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Sasha sighed. “Maybe I’m not ace. I mean, I guess, I kind of… liked kissing? It wasn’t bad.” 

“There’s more than one way to be ace.” 

“Huh?”

“That’s where I started, but it’s not how I think about it now. Some of us like kissing. Maybe I would under certain circumstances. Some asexuals even like sex. But that’s not what being ace is about. It’s about whether you can look at someone and think, you know what I want to do? Fuck them.” Mikasa shifted to look at Sasha. “I’ve never felt that way about anyone. As for sex itself, I’m not grossed out by it, but the idea of me doing it… I don’t know, it doesn’t appeal to me. But that’s just me. Some aces actively seek out sex, but it’s not about the person they’re doing it with. And, with being aromantic, it’s like that but with love. You can date someone, really like them, but you don’t generally just decide from meeting someone that right away, you want to date them.”

“Okay. I guess I am ace then.” Sasha hesitated. Should she bring this up? She didn’t want to make a big deal of it, but she wanted to be honest. “I don’t think I’m aro though. There was a… demi? Demiromantic? I think I’m that.”

“Cool.”

Mikasa said it so bluntly, so honestly; that single _cool_ just made Sasha want to talk more, even if it wasn’t necessary. 

“I’d date Krista,” Sasha said, quiet, releasing her secret to the air. 

Mikasa couldn’t help it; she laughed. “You had an enormous crush on her.”

“Was it obvious?” Sasha slumped, not embarrassed this time so much as kind of… melty. 

“Yeah, it really was.” 

“She’s a goddess, though.” Sasha went all starry-eyed, and she could feel her face heating up. She’d never said this before, avoided even thinking about it. After all, Krista was, what, fifty years old? But she was incredible. 

“You’re not wrong. Sorry to say, I don’t think it would work out though.”

“Why not?” Sasha asked, mostly joking. “Eren and Armin are dating Levi.”

“That’s true, but Krista’s married, and I’m pretty sure she and Ymir aren’t polyamorous.”

Well, that was true. But, since she was already being honest, she couldn’t stop herself from throwing out another one: “I’d date you.” 

The theatre was very, very quiet. The air conditioning turned on. Sasha’s ears prickled, not appreciating the wooshy sound the air made through the vents; she also suddenly felt very, very awkward. _Oh, no, I shouldn’t have said anything at all_... 

“I know you don’t want to,” Sasha said, rushed. The heat in her face was full-force now. She turned to Mikasa but leaned away a little, put her hands up, waving them. “That’s fine. I just wanted you to know.”

“Okay.” 

Sasha barely heard her, and kept going. “It started as a squish, you know? I just wanted to be your friend. And then at some point it turned into. Um.” She fidgeted, clenching and unclenching her hands. “I’m sorry.” 

“You don’t need to be sorry. I’m… really touched, actually.” 

“Oh.” That wasn’t what Sasha expected. She didn’t know what she expected -- it wasn’t like Mikasa would push her off the stage or whatever. But it wasn’t for Mikasa to accept her feelings, enough to be _touched_. 

“Most people who have crushes on me just think I’m pretty, and when they get to know me it goes away. But you actually got to know me first. So I appreciate it.” 

Sasha smiled, but it wasn’t a totally happy smile. Part of her still felt insecure about saying anything in the first place. And yet, there was something else trying to burst out of her. 

“Hey…” Mikasa caught sight of Sasha’s expression. “Is there something wrong?” 

“N-no,” she lied. 

“You can be honest with me.”

“Promise you won’t get mad?” Her hands twisted, fingers wringing themselves between one another, and Sasha felt very, very small. 

“I don’t make promises, but I don’t think I’ll get mad. Not at you.” 

Sasha squeezed her eyes shut. _Not at you_. How special could Mikasa make her feel? Sasha had already been allowed so much, she’d gotten so close to Mikasa and seen sides of Mikasa she was pretty sure no-one else, save maybe for Armin and Eren, had ever seen or would ever see. Maybe if she didn’t look at Mikasa, she could say this one last thing. “Can I kiss you?” 

“Huh?”

“I know -- I know you don’t like it, and we already sort of did, for the play, but I was wondering what it would be like if it was just… for us.” She realised how ridiculous that sounded and backtracked. “Um. Never mind.” Sasha opened her eyes, but still couldn’t meet Mikasa’s. It was all horribly embarrassing, and she wished she’d remembered she didn’t have to come here in the first place, if it meant she could avoid all this awkwardness around the person she, completely out of any of her expectations, had come to love most in the world. “Forget I asked. I’m sorry.” 

“Okay.” 

Okay. _Okay_. Okay! It was okay. Oh, god, it was okay, Mikasa would just forget it and they would both move on from this. Sasha relaxed, until she felt Mikasa’s hand on her cheek. “What?”

“I said okay. I’ll kiss you, if you want me to.” 

What. Wait. What??????? Sasha wasn’t sure she could handle any more ups and downs from tonight, it was all so much at once. “But you don’t.” 

“No, I don’t want to.”

Sasha heard her heart shatter like glass. 

“But I also don’t… not want to.” 

Oh. 

Mikasa brushed Sasha’s hair back with her free hand. “I don’t know if it’ll be any different for me. But if you want me to, I will.” 

Sasha felt like a deer caught in headlights; kind of looked like one, with her wide eyes reflecting the little light in the room. This was what she wanted, but she never, ever thought she would have a chance at getting it. And probably, it would never happen again. Would it be better to do it, just this once -- or to never do it at all? 

“Sasha?” 

“Okay.” She swallowed her fear and closed her eyes. “Kiss me.” 

The first thing Sasha noticed was Mikasa’s smell, as she moved close. It was a familiar one; they’d been sleeping in the same bed for most of the semester, so Sasha was surprised she noticed it at all. But it smelled like home. Who knew a person could smell like home? 

Then, she noticed Mikasa’s fingers, moving slightly against her cheek, relocating slightly as the angles of their bodies changed. Mikasa’s fingers were rough, callused from years of fencing ambidextrous, of playing string instruments, of lifting weights, but they were gentle on Sasha’s skin. Mikasa knew her strength, knew it very well, and knew how to put it away when she needed to. 

Finally, Sasha felt Mikasa’s lips against hers. She gasped through her nose, and the breath she released a few moments later was shaky. Sasha wasn’t sure this was real -- could it just be a dream? -- but when she realised that light pressure against her lips wasn’t going away, she was able to relax and let the air move through her normally, in and out her nose while her mouth was occupied. Sasha tried to compare it to the messy kisses they’d shared for the Rocky Horror Show, paired up as Columbia and Eddie, or any of the others who had to suck face. That had been awkward and sloppy; not bad, just awkward. Kind of thrilling, really. 

But this was just… soft. Thrilling, too, but in a different way. Closed lips, no tongues, no teeth, no exchange of saliva. It was… nice. 

For Sasha. 

Mikasa ended the kiss. She leaned away, opened her eyes, watched Sasha stay perfectly still for a few silent heartbeats. Then Sasha sucked in a deep breath. 

“How was that?” Mikasa asked.

“Good,” Sasha breathed. It was good. It was sweet. It was everything she wanted. “You?”

“Wet,” Mikasa said. 

Sasha blinked. Her heart, which had been soaring, took a nose-dive and plummeted directly into her stomach, bypassing a few other vital organs (or perhaps crushing right through them) on the way down. It hurt as much as this extended metaphor is hurting anyone who has a concept of internal human anatomy. 

She’d just had the kiss of a lifetime, with someone she honestly, truly could say she was completely and totally in love with against all the most terrifying odds, and all Mikasa thought of it was that it was _wet_. 

“I have to go,” Sasha said suddenly. For some reason, she just couldn’t be around Mikasa anymore. 

And she got up and ran. 

“Sasha!” 

She heard Mikasa call out her name, run down the halls after her, but for all Mikasa’s strength and athleticism, for all that Sasha was neither very strong in her legs nor particularly athletic aside from her archery, she was, for a few terrifying seconds, unreachably fast. She was around the corner before Mikasa could see which way she’d gone, and out the building before her tears fell. 

Sasha never expected she’d feel the pain of a broken heart. For so many years, she thought she was _broken_ already, that her unc-- _than man_ had broken her, because she couldn’t feel anything that she was “expected to feel at this age”. When Mikasa had first typed out the word “asexual”, Sasha had googled it, and it was exactly how she had always been. 

What it meant, to her, was that she wasn’t broken. There was nothing wrong with Sasha; she wasn’t the only one who felt, or didn’t feel, this way. 

She knew, almost from the beginning, that Mikasa was aromantic as well, and wouldn’t love her. Sasha knew, about the same time, that she _wasn’t_ completely aro, but she never thought it would be a problem. She never thought they would get this close. 

But they had. God, they’d gotten closer than Sasha had ever been to anyone else before. Closer than she was to Connie, and they’d grown up together from infancy, had been given baths together as toddlers, were raised almost like twins even though they were from different families, because they shared a yard and never left each others’ side, and until high school they were the same size and could (and did) share clothes. 

Somehow, Mikasa had broken past all that, had wiggled right in next to Sasha, and Sasha, knowing full well her feelings would never be returned, had fallen hard for her. 

Fallen, and when she reached terminal velocity, she forgot to open her parachute. 

_Splat._

She was back to being broken, in a completely different, completely uncomparable way -- but once again, she was left to pick up the pieces on her own. 

Sasha collapsed against a lamppost, clutching her chest, sliding down to the ground. She ended up in the science quad, between two buildings connected by an indoor bridge. Breathing hard, Sasha curled up and tried to cry as quietly as possible. 

“Sasha?” 

She meeped. 

“Sasha!” Connie repeated. He came running. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?” 

Sasha felt Connie’s hand on her shoulder and she curled up tighter. “What are you doing here?” she asked. 

“Review session. Engineering. Not important. What happened?” 

“Mikasa --” was all Sasha was able to get out before her throat closed up. 

“Oh, no…” Connie whispered. He put his arms around her and rubbed her back. “Let it out, okay?”

And Sasha did. She cried, and she clutched at Connie’s shirt, and was overwhelmed with regret, completely unknowing that Mikasa was doing exactly the same thing at the same time, crying into Eren’s arms in another building, wondering what would have been a better choice. 

\---

Sleeping alone felt wrong. 

Mikasa was used to having someone squeezed in next to her on the tiny bed. So without Sasha there, she felt cold. 

Which was weird, because it was only the last few months that she’d been sharing a bed with Sasha at all. Mikasa was never one for that sort of thing; she didn’t often share with Eren and Armin when they were kids, even if the two of them snuck into each other’s room all the time. She loved them, of course; they were her family after all. But she didn’t feel right sleeping near anyone. 

But with Sasha it had felt normal. And with her normal gone, Mikasa didn’t get a wink of sleep. 

Mikasa dragged herself down to the dining hall, dishevelled and with a piercing gaze, grabbed a bagel and bit right into it before shuffling back out. She felt like shit and didn’t want to go to class, but Mikasa wasn’t one to skip, even if maybe she should. 

She didn’t realise until she got to Anatomy for the Artist that Sasha would be there; in fact this realisation only came when Mikasa was twenty minutes late and Sasha _wasn’t_ there. 

“Sorry I’m late,” Mikasa mumbled, and Shadis looked furious until he saw how miserable she looked. He was not known for being a particularly kind professor, but Shadis did care about his students, and with how terrible Mikasa seemed to be feeling, he considered it a compliment she came to class at all. 

Mikasa sat down in the empty seat next to Eren and leaned against him. He rubbed her back a little, then went back to taking notes; he knew at this point she wouldn’t want any overbearing shows of comfort. Armin, too, just gave her a sympathetic (but not pitying, thank god) look and let it go. 

The day’s topic was mostly butts. They’d just done the back, which meant it was butt time, but Mikasa could barely focus. She tried, she really did, but found herself zoning out more often than not. 

Eren and Armin both noticed, and both resolved to show Mikasa their notes later on. 

Unfortunately Mikasa didn’t really know anyone in her afternoon class, but Jean had taken Analysis and Repertory with the same professor the previous year, and she was sure he still had all his notes, so she texted him during lunch. She knew she’d be no more attentive than in the morning, though she still went to class. 

After that, Mikasa went to her usual practice room. Eren had class, and a work shift, so she wouldn’t be able to practice with piano, but she tried singing a capella, with her violin out as well for the second half of the song. The performance was supposed to be about her, anyway; she should be able to carry it herself. And she had to _still_ be able to carry it, even when she felt like shit. Even when every moment that passed was another tear held back. 

It hurt. Of course it did. Friend breakups were just as devastating as romantic ones, after all. No matter what the situation, losing someone who you thought would be by your side forever felt like cutting out some vital organ or other. Mikasa had, many times, been accused by those who didn’t know her well of having a black hole where her heart should be, because she didn’t show her emotions very much. But now she felt like she really did have a twisting mass-void inside her chest, sucking up everything, eating her apart from the inside. 

Still, she had her voice. Shaky as it was -- Mikasa wasn’t used to singing with a lump in her throat after all -- she had it. And she projected it beyond the walls of the practice floor, down the halls and through the floor to classrooms she didn’t even think she might be disturbing. 

After one run of the song, she swallowed the lump in her throat and did it again, at her usual, still loud but not disruptive volume. 

It hurt. What’s more, Mikasa didn’t know how to fix this. She’d never had many friends, so she had never lost one before. And Sasha was avoiding her, clearly, so trying to talk to her might just make everything even worse than it already was. 

Could it get worse though? Of course it could, it could always get worse, but Mikasa didn’t see how. 

She supposed… the worst thing was if they just forgot about each other. If they went their separate ways as if the last few months had never happened. As if they hadn’t basically lived together, learned one another’s mannerisms inside out, built their everyday around each other until it was seamless and second-nature. It would be worse if they no longer thought about how they’d affected one another, simply by being there. If they got to a point where they just didn’t know what happened to the other, at all. Didn’t know what happened to each other, whether the other was even alive or not… 

Mikasa didn’t want that to happen. But if that was what Sasha wanted… she couldn’t go against it. She had a million apologies on the tip of her tongue, but she would only say them if Sasha wanted to hear them. 

Until then, Mikasa would just let it be.


	47. The Kisses Of Peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We can make it work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’ve placed a link to mikasa’s song in the text, at about where her performance begins, if you want to listen to it while you’re reading. it’s also in the end notes, if you wanna wait. 
> 
> warnings: drug mentions

Mikasa stared down her advisor where he sat in the third row of seats. She was the last to get practice time in this theatre, and this was her last night before the performance, and it was really way too late to be getting Professor Dita’s comments, but a lot had happened since the last time he’d listened in on her. Despite the late hour, he was here, and he listened to her sing and took notes on a clipboard. 

Dita stood when Mikasa finished, applauding her with a smile. He came up on stage, then, to make sure Mikasa could hear him without yelling, before launching into the notes he’d taken during the performance. 

“First of all, I want to compliment your pianist.”

Eren jumped a little in his seat. “Who, me?”

“Yes. I hear you learned the whole song in less than a week.” 

Eren shrugged, and scratched his face. “It wasn’t too hard of a piece. I mean, I’m still sight-reading some of it.”

“And at full speed. Amazing. Now, Mikasa.” Dita got serious. “You fixed all the problems I told you about last time, but I can see why you brought me in. You have new mistakes.”

“I know.” Mikasa did know, fully well, but her shoulders slumped a little anyway. 

“It was going fantastically well at the beginning, but your voice screeched on ‘touched’ and after that it was a mess. You’re not usually one to put emotion into your singing, which we’ve talked about, and you have a way of doing it that works, though I think your music suffers for it. But now you’ve gone in the opposite direction -- too much emotion. I don’t know where it’s coming from. You’re belting the first chorus like it’s your last, and you’re out of breath by the time your violin comes in. I would advise for more… subtlety, at first. I believe you can get across the same impact of the words you’re singing by being quiet, maybe even whispering the first chorus, and then you’ll actually make it to the end of the song.” 

Mikasa stood there with her jaw hanging open. “But.”

“I know. You have a strong voice. With your usual emotionless method you could do it. But if this is the direction you’re going in, then you need to understand how the emotion is going to wear out your voice.” Dita looked back down at his notes. “The violin bit was fantastic, both technically and in its emotion. Though, well, this is a bit unusual for me to say, but hold it lower. I can tell you’re more used to a cello.” He held up his own arm to demonstrate: “You’re not addressing a god,” he said, with his hand raised at about head level. He dropped the hand to shoulder height; “You’re addressing a friend.”

“Got it.”

“Your singing after that was also fantastic, but I think if you hold back at the beginning, you’ll be able to push it further.” 

Mikasa just nodded. 

“And maybe, with that last _ahoy, ahoy_ bit, you can get even quieter to really make it hit home. Think of it this way -- before, you focussed only on making your singing perfect in a _technical_ sense. But now you’re performing with feeling, so you need to get across the full force of that emotion, and that forces you to change some of the technical aspects, so that it can still be perfect, but also convey all the feeling you’re putting into it without breaking you.” 

“Okay. What should I do about the screeching at the beginning?”

“Put less air into what comes before it. If you have plenty left over your voice won’t die out at the end of the line.”

“Okay.”

“Any more questions?”

Mikasa shook her head. 

“All right. Do it again.” 

\---

With Eren helping Mikasa nightly to perfect her performance, Armin took it upon herself to put in a call to Sasha. She showed up at Sasha’s dorm room, having checked ahead of time with Connie to see if she was in. 

Connie was doing homework on his bed when Armin knocked. He’d gotten a fair amount done, though it was slow and thus felt incredibly tedious, but he supposed that was what Engineering was all about, with or without a learning disability to make it infuriating. This wasn’t the first time he’d questioned his choice of minor. He put his homework aside, however, and got out of bed to let Armin in. 

“Hey,” Connie greeted. “She’s asleep, has been all day so you can wake her if you wanna talk now. Do you want me to leave you alone, or…?” 

Armin shook her head. “It’s your room. Besides, you know her better than I do.” 

“I don’t know what to say, though.” Connie closed the door once Armin was in and got her shoes off. “I’ve just been, you know, giving her hugs when she wakes up, holding her ‘til she falls asleep again. She’s really fucked up over this, whatever it is. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her this bad.” He shrugged. “Maybe once. And that was… really different.” 

“She hasn’t told you want it’s about either?”

Connie shook his head. “Only that it’s got to do with Mikasa.” 

Sasha stirred; Armin wondered if she’d heard Mikasa’s name, somehow, in her sleep and rode that sound out of her dream. “Mmh.” 

Connie knelt down next to her bed, running his hand through her tangled hair. “Hey, Sash’. Armin’s here, she wants to talk to you.” 

“Arm…?” Sasha squeaked and tugged the blankets over her head, trying to hide herself. Connie looked at Armin, his eyes pained. He didn’t think Sasha wanted to see her. 

Armin came over as well, kneeling beside Connie. “Sasha?” she called, gentle as possible. “Hey, I’m not mad at you. I just want to talk.”

Sasha didn’t respond, didn’t move at all. 

“I don’t know what happened,” Armin said. “But you and Mikasa are really close, and I want to help you. Please, let’s talk.” Armin reached out towards what she thought was Sasha’s shoulder, but decided better than to touch her; she didn’t want to overstep her bounds here, and it already seemed like she wasn’t welcome. She drew her hands back and glanced at Connie. 

“Sasha,” Connie called. “Come on out of there. We wanna help.” 

“Why?” Sasha asked, so quiet Armin almost didn’t hear her. “Why don’t you hate me?”

“Because Mikasa doesn’t,” Armin said. “And she would know best. She’s been, well, she’s been really sad. She misses you. She’s worried about you.” 

“Then why isn’t she here?”

“She thinks you don’t want to see her.” 

Sasha finally pushed back the blankets, and lifted herself on her arms. “I don’t!” she shouted. “I can’t. I don’t -- I can’t handle that. I fucked up, I…” She whined, short and frustrated, and faceplanted back into her pillow. “I don’t want her to look at me like she pities me.” 

“Why would she pity you?” Armin asked. “What happened?” 

“I -- we kissed,” Sasha said, and her voice squeaked a little. 

Armin wasn’t sure, at first, what the issue was. Mikasa and Sasha had kissed before, plenty of times, for Rocky Horror. But clearly this wasn’t any of those times. They must have done it on their own, and to Armin’s knowledge, that wasn’t something that was ever meant to be a part of Mikasa and Sasha’s friendship. “Can you tell me why?”

“I wanted to. I asked.” Sasha raised her arm, stuck it between her face and the pillow to wipe at her eyes with her sleeve. 

“That’s not so bad, is it?” Armin said. 

“I told her, I kind of liked her in the, you know. The romantic way.”

Armin was starting to see where this may have gone off the rails. She shared a look with Connie, who was chewing on his lower lip. Unbeknownst to Armin, Connie was thinking on all the regrets he had for the way he’d teased Sasha and Mikasa for acting so much like a couple, or at least what he was used to seeing from couples. 

“And she said it was okay. And so I asked if she would kiss me, and she did. I just wanted to know what it would be like, if we were just doing it for us.” Sasha let out a sudden sob. “But I was the only one who felt anything!” 

Armin asked as gently as she could: “What did you expect her to feel?”

“I don’t know. Something. I’m… important to her. She says that, you know, all the time. So I expected her to feel something.”

“What did you feel?” 

“...It was nice. Warm.” 

“And she said she didn’t feel anything?”

“She said it was wet.” Sasha huffed. “I put my heart out there and all I get is _wet_.”

“Do you think… she doesn’t put her heart out there?” Armin asked. 

Sasha looked at her, finally, not sure how to answer that. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. “I don’t understand.”

“Mikasa isn’t a person who feels a lot of emotions. Like, right off the bat, she’s a pretty muted person. You noticed that, right?”

“Yeah. Of course.” 

“And on top of that, what she does feel, she hides. I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve seen her react at a level I’m used to seeing from anyone else.” 

“Okay.” 

“But…” Armin paused. She looked at Sasha meaningfully. “You know that, you see that. But still, I have to wonder if you’ve ever seen her the way I’m used to seeing her.” 

“What do you mean?”

“She opens up around you, in a way I’ve never seen her do. And I can’t imagine it’s unconscious. She’s used to hiding everything.” Armin took Sasha’s hands in hers, squeezing them. “It’s still muted, that’s just how she is. So I understand why you don’t see it. But how she is around you is… it’s not like anything I’ve seen before. You’re important enough to her, that she’s willing to put her emotions out there, to the extent that she can, every second she’s around you, because she knows how much it means to you.

“Mikasa can’t feel the way you do,” Armin continued. “But you are important to her. So important.”

Sasha’s hands were shaking, clutched between Armin’s. She bit her lip, starting to understand what Armin was saying but not sure if she believed it. 

“Remember when you first met her? She was probably pretty unpleasant, right?” Armin said. 

Sasha hesitated, then nodded. “I thought she was cool, though.”

“She is, definitely. But she’s also pretty mean to people she doesn’t know, because she just doesn’t care about them. Do you remember how she was with us, though? And her other friends, like Jean? Annie?”

Sasha thought about it -- it felt like so long ago. “Kind of distant. She would joke around with you and Eren, sometimes.”

“And how is she with you?”

Sasha shrugged. “The same as with you, I guess.”

“Has she ever told you when something was bothering her?”

“Yeah, sometimes.” 

“And you sleep in the same bed, right?” 

Sasha nodded. “That’s not weird, is it?”

“Not at all. But Mikasa has almost never done that before. Definitely not so consistently. She would avoid it when Eren or I asked her to, when we were kids. She doesn’t even really like touching us more than necessary.” 

“I thought it was kind of weird, that she never, like, hugged either of you or anything.”

Armin nodded. “I thought it was weird she was so willing to be close to you. But it just means she’s comfortable around you.” _Suddenly, inexplicably comfortable -- like me and Levi?_ Armin thought, but she pushed that aside. Now was not the time. “So yeah, when you kiss, maybe all she gets out of it is that kissing is kind of wet. It’s not because she doesn’t like you. She’s being honest. With anyone else, she wouldn’t have even let them kiss her.”

Sasha tore her hands out of Armin’s grasp. “She kissed you.” 

Armin raised her eyebrows. Did Mikasa tell her about that? How embarrassing… “Yeah. And before she met you, Eren and I were the most important people in her life. The three of us are closer than family. But you know…” Armin hesitated. “Mikasa will be pissed at me for saying this, but she’s never cried for any of us.”

“What do you mean?”

Armin could feel Connie’s eyes on her, could only imagine how shocked he was. “I’ve never seen Mikasa cry. Not once in the whole time I’ve known her. She didn’t cry when her parents died. She didn’t cry after Eren’s accident, the one that killed Eren’s mom and nearly killed him. Neither Eren, nor I, nor anyone we know has ever seen Mikasa cry, until she cried into Eren’s shirt on Tuesday night.” 

Sasha stared, her already big eyes even wider. 

“And she does want to see you.” Armin smiled. “She really cares about you. Mikasa wants you in her life as much as you want her. She just shows it a little differently.” 

It was like a weight was lifted from Sasha’s shoulders. All this time, she thought Mikasa just didn’t feel that much for her, was friendly but not overly so… she thought Mikasa shared a room and her whole life with Sasha because she was lonely. And a part of her kept reaching, always reaching forward for Mikasa, not realising they were right beside each other all along. “I didn’t know.” 

“That’s okay. Mikasa’s a weirdo. Most people don’t understand her. But now you do, right?” Armin reached for Sasha’s hands once again, to comfort her, and give her strength. “Or at least a little better than you did before.”

Sasha nodded. 

“What are you going to do about it?” 

Sasha looked determined. “I’m gonna go to her room and apologise.”

Armin winced. “She’s, uh, she’s practicing for her performance. All night. She won’t be in her room.”

Sasha was undeterred. “I’m gonna go to Rose Hall and apologise.” 

“How about you go to her performance tomorrow? She’ll see you. And you can apologise after.”

“But. But I want to now.” 

“I know you do. I think she needs a little more time to sort out what she’s feeling though.” 

“...Okay,” Sasha said reluctantly. “I’ll wait until tomorrow. But um. Will you come with me?”

“Of course,” Armin said. “I’m not going to miss Mikasa’s performance.” 

Sasha looked to Connie, and he agreed as well. “You know I’ll be there.”

Armin grinned, but then got serious. “But you have to apologise yourself. I can’t help you with that.”

Sasha nodded, nervous once more. “What if she doesn’t accept my apology?”

“She will. If you mean it, she’ll know. Mikasa feels other people’s emotions better than her own.” 

“Huh?”

“Mikasa is… kind of a superhero,” Armin explained. “I mean, she’s super strong, and she also just… she knows how people she cares about are feeling, all the time. Like what emotions are going through them, especially if they’re really strong emotions. Even if they’re far away. So she’ll know.” 

“The how does she not know what I’m feeling now?” 

“I think she does, but she can’t separate it from what she’s feeling. Or she can’t tell what you’re thinking, only that you’re sad and scared.” 

“Huh. Okay. That’s weird.” 

“I told you, Mikasa’s a weirdo. But she’s our weirdo, right?”

Sasha smiled. “Right!” 

\---

Mikasa felt sick. 

Her performance was perfect, all rough edges smoothed. Even Eren was ready, bouncing with excitement and dressed nicer than Mikasa had seen him since their high school graduation, in stain-free black trousers and a perfectly pressed white shirt. Other music majors, mostly seniors who were required to perform, swarmed around the backstage, but Mikasa sat in a corner, hunched forward, downing bottles of water and trying to drown her nerves. 

All because Sasha was here. 

Sasha was here. Mikasa had seen her come in with Connie and Armin and (surprisingly) Levi, and Mikasa had darted away before any of them could see her, instantly feeling like she was going to vomit. 

Sasha was here, and Mikasa was singing the very song Sasha had sent her months ago. It was a song that, coincidentally, described all too well how Mikasa felt about this whole… thing, with the kiss and the feelings and the not speaking for half a week after spending nearly every moment, sleeping or waking, alongside one another for months. And about what comes next. 

Eren sat down next to her. He’d tried to ask earlier what was wrong, but she just sort of glared at him and chugged more water. But he couldn’t stand to see her so… whatever she was feeling. “Mikasa. Talk to me.” 

“Sasha’s here,” Mikasa mumbled. 

“That’s good, isn’t it?” 

Mikasa shrugged. “She gave me the song.” 

“The one you’re singing? That’s great!”

“Have you, like, listened to it?” 

“Yeah. Every day this week. Sounds great.”

Mikasa grimaced. “No, the _words_.”

Eren’s eyes travelled off to the side as he struggled to remember the words, mouthing them as he went along. “I don’t get it.”

“She… we kissed, Eren. That’s what happened.”

“What?” That… didn’t sound very Mikasa, so Eren was confused. Armin had gone to talk to Sasha the night before, but she hadn’t said anything when she came home, so this was all news to Eren. 

“That’s what happened with Sasha. She asked me to. I think she… well, she pretty much said she has, you know, feelings. For me.” Mikasa breathed in, slow and deep. “I kind of might have said something insensitive after. And I’m not sure I should have agreed to kiss her at all.” 

“Oh, that’s. So the song… Is that how you feel?”

“Yeah. More or less. Think she’ll know?”

Eren pressed his lips together hard, thinking, rocking side-to-side. “Maybe? I mean, the way you sing it, yeah, it’s possible. Is that bad?” 

Mikasa’s head went back down between her knees, and she pressed the half-empty, lukewarm bottle of water against her forehead. “I don’t know. It might be. It’s not exactly the kind of song that’s like, oh, it’s okay, let’s go back to how we were before because I really care about you even though I don’t want to kiss you like you do.” 

“Really?”

“Eren.”

“That’s exactly what the song is about, though.” 

“No it’s not.” 

“Are you sure?” Eren thought about it a little more. “That’s what it sounds like to me. It’s very you. It’s kind of like, _maybe this would be easier if we could have sex, but I don’t want to, and I don’t think that’s important ‘cause you’re my friend and I like us that way_ \-- isn’t it? It’s not the happiest-sounding song, but the lyrics are pretty positive.” 

Mikasa looked at him. “That’s not… how I’ve thought of it.” 

“But that’s literally what it’s saying. What did you think?” 

“I thought it was more, _you don’t want to see me again after we kissed, because I’d rather be your friend than fuck you, and if that’s the only option you’re giving me I’d rather not have you in my life at all_.” 

“Is… that how you feel?” 

Mikasa stared at him. “I wish I didn’t.” 

“But does she want to fuck you? I thought she was ace too.” 

“I know that. But like. I don’t want to date her either.” 

“Did she give you an ultimatum or something?” Eren asked. 

“What? No.” Mikasa stared at him in disbelief. “No. Sasha wouldn’t do that. She said it was fine if I didn’t want to.” 

“So. Um. Wait, what exactly is the problem here, that’s making you think like this?”

“I don’t know,” Mikasa admitted. “I really don’t know. I guess, blaming her --”

“Is easier than blaming yourself?” Eren finished. 

“Yeah.”

Eren nodded, and he took Mikasa’s hand. “Listen. I know you know this, ‘cause you told me the same thing a million times. But sometimes, when you care about someone…”

“You have to do what’s hard. I know.” Mikasa leaned back against the wall behind her. “I said it was wet.”

“What?”

“I said the kiss was wet. When she asked how it felt.”

Eren stifled a laugh. He didn’t stifle it well, and Mikasa glared at him. “I’m sorry. It’s just. That’s kind of…”

“I know,” Mikasa groaned. “I couldn’t think of anything else.” 

“At least you were honest?” 

The lighting changed, and Mikasa felt a familiar lurch in her stomach. “I feel sick.” 

“Come on, you can do this.” Eren moved to kneel in front of Mikasa and gripped both her hands around the water bottle. Her hands twitched, as they usually did when someone touched her; Eren was amazed she had ever managed to let Sasha so close. “You’ve sung this song a million times this semester. Probably a hundred times this week alone. And it sounds fantastic. And…” Eren grinned. “I think Sasha’s gonna love it.” 

“You really think so?” 

Eren had never seen Mikasa look so insecure; her mask of general indifference had fallen, and the look in her eyes was raw and sad. Still, Eren smiled at her, for whatever it was worth. “I know it.” 

Mikasa took a deep breath, and let it out slow. She finished off the water bottle -- her third -- and nodded. “We’re second.”

“Yup.” 

“We should get in the wings.” 

Eren helped her up. 

Mikasa put her mask back in place, indifference once again falling over her face. Deadpan, she said, “I’m gonna have to pee so bad after this.” 

Eren snorted, a great honking snort that could probably be heard in the quieting audience. Someone shushed him. 

“Thanks for doing all this for me,” Mikasa said.

Eren waved her off, one hand pressed to his face to hold back his giggles. 

“No really, thank you.”

“What are big brothers for?” Eren said. 

“You’re right. You’re supposed to teach me how to wrestle and threaten anyone who breathes on me.” 

“ _You’re_ the one who taught _me_ to fight.” 

“And I did threaten Levi. Maybe big brothers really are for comfort.” 

Eren shook his head and grabbed Mikasa, pulling her into a big bear hug, which she accepted. In her high heeled shoes she was taller than him so he made up for it by squeezing her tighter. “You’re the best little sister ever.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Little brother,” she teased. “We need to be on the other side of the stage, don’t we?” 

“Oh! Yep. Let’s go.” 

\---

“Looks like Mikasa is second,” Armin said, reading the program. She held it in her left hand, while Levi’s fingers intertwined with her right. Sasha sat to her left, and Connie at the end, in the seat by the left aisle. 

The program helpfully supplied not only the students’ names but also the pieces they performed, and for each piece the composer and the year of composition. “Looks like she’s the only one doing anything from the last century,” Armin noted. 

Sasha’s leg bounced quickly, every once in a while speeding up too much, falling off beat, and stuttering to a stop before picking up again. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” 

“Of course,” Armin said. “There’s no better way to show how much you care about her than being at her big performance, right?” 

“Hm.” Sasha wasn’t sure if she agreed or disagreed, wasn’t really sure of anything at that precise moment. 

“Hey,” Connie said, patting her hand where it gripped the armrest, tendons straining against her skin. “She’s gonna see you, and she’s gonna know everything’s okay.” 

“I hope so.” 

The house lights dimmed, and someone came on stage to announce the occasion and the first student, a first-year pianist, playing a song with a title Sasha assumed was Italian from how she could almost-but-not-quite understand it. It ended up being quite long, a little over ten minutes, and Sasha thought it sounded beautiful, but her mind was half-taken with thoughts of how Mikasa would react to her being there. The four of them were pretty close to the front, after all; she didn’t count but they were probably in the fifth row or so, and in the middle section, with a little bit of the stage glow reflected onto them. Mikasa could feasibly see Sasha when she came on… 

The announcer came back out, and at the name “Mikasa Ackerman,” Sasha’s stomach did a little flip, and she had the strangest urge to run. 

Mikasa came out first, followed by Eren who laid out his music at the piano and took a seat. He waited for Mikasa to take her place front-and-center (the piano was a bit to the right) and give her signal -- two taps of her fingers on the violin bow held behind her back -- before he **[began](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0keMZoj2Zak)** to play his accompaniment. 

Mikasa caught Sasha’s eye as the opening notes sounded; she smiled the tiniest smile, looking positively _relieved_ , and time seemed to stop for Sasha. Even the music paused, just for a second between notes. Then Mikasa’s eyes lifted, her smile dropped, and she sang. 

Sasha knew this song -- she _knew_ it, and it wasn’t that popular of a song… oh! she remembered: she’d sent it to Mikasa, a youtube link months ago after hearing her sing through an open window. Mikasa had picked _this_ song, out of every other… And Mikasa really did sound just like the singer, and like she put every bit as much of her heart into it. 

Sasha realised at the bridge that, though it must have been purely a coincidence, the song sounded a lot like their situation. 

Mikasa’s eyes bore into Sasha once more, as if she couldn’t help it. Sasha’s heart clenched; she wondered if everyone else in the audience felt so deeply the twisting, raw effect of _who needs a lover when you’ve got a new best friend?_

Sasha shrank into her seat. _That’s me_ , she thought. _I’m her best friend._ Mikasa didn’t want Sasha as a lover because she already had Sasha as a best friend -- what could be better? And that, being best friends, more than anything, was what Sasha wanted. It hurt when he thought it had all fallen to pieces in front of her, but Mikasa’s song (they very one Mikasa thought of as Sasha’s song) was telling her it could all be put back together. 

Connie startled beside her, then leaned in and whispered, “Are you crying?” 

Sasha hastily wiped at the single tear that had dripped from her eye, and she put a finger to her lips to signal him to be quiet. Of course she was crying. Mikasa was singing -- singing absolutely _beautifully_ , and singing _to Sasha_ , and everything hurt again but in a completely different, and much better way. It hurt, she thought, in the way that a piercing hurts when it swells, to signal that it’s healing. 

\---

The music majors were a small bunch, and the number of students who bothered with end-of-semester performances when they weren’t required was even smaller; yet still, the whole concert was over three hours long, with the second half all seniors.

Mikasa couldn’t wait until the end. 

However, she did wait until intermission. She was pretty sure the sophomore cellist after her would literally murder her, probably with their backup bow, if she interrupted anyone’s performance to hug it out or whatever. 

Mikasa skipped out during the last performance before intermission (a junior flutist, and while Mikasa wouldn’t say anything, she could tell said flutist had not practiced nearly enough) and waited by the exit doors, tapping her feet. Eren was beside her, grinning, fiddling with his phone. 

“What are you doing?” Mikasa asked him. 

“Hm? Uh.” Eren looked up and then back down at his phone. “Texting Armin. Hey, I’m probably gonna sleep in the dorm tonight.” 

Mikasa shrugged; Eren could do what he wanted, she didn’t understand why he said it like it was a request. She looked at him a little closer, and he was biting his lip, and she put his sentences together -- “Oh. Good for her.” 

Eren pointedly looked away from his sister. 

The mediocre flute ended, and Mikasa’s heart thudded in her chest. After a few words from the announcer, the restless audience started to move. Mikasa opened one door, Eren the other, and they propped them open before anyone could come through, standing to the side so as to not get trampled. 

Eren was the one to spot their group, by Levi’s now ever-present houndstooth newsboy cap; behind him and Armin were Connie and Sasha craning their necks. Eren waved to them and took Sasha’s arm when she came by, pulling her from the flow of traffic and directing her to the other set of doors where Mikasa was waiting. 

Sasha hesitated, fear once again making itself known in her eyes. Not fear of Mikasa, but fear of losing Mikasa. 

“Come on. She sang your song,” Eren reminded her, hoping to cheer her on. 

“Is she mad?” Sasha asked.

“You should ask her that.” 

Sasha’s lips set in a hard line and she nodded once. Her eyes fixed on Mikasa and she strode across the distance between them with purpose. 

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said, as she stopped a foot away from Mikasa. 

Mikasa spun around, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly agape. 

“I’m sorry,” Sasha repeated. “I’m sorry I left you, I’m sorry I kissed you --”

Mikasa jumped forward, throwing her arms around Sasha’s shoulders, and pushed her face against Sasha’s neck. “I’m sorry for being so insensitive with your feelings.”

“You weren’t! I mean, you don’t return them. That’s, it’s okay. I expected that.”

“But I shouldn’t have been so rude about it. I’m sorry.” 

Sasha hugged her back. “I forgive you.”

“I forgive you too. I missed you.” 

Sasha nodded, no longer able to form words but hoping Mikasa would understand she felt the same. She had her best friend back. That was all she needed. 

At the other door, four people watched them hug, looking on fondly. 

Armin leaned her head against Levi’s shoulder; they weren’t holding hands out here, but they stayed close together. Levi looked up at her, and something in his gaze made her blush furiously. 

Connie nudged Eren. “You’re gonna be alone tonight, aren’t you?”

“Yup,” Eren confirmed. 

“Wanna come over? Me and Jean are playing board games.”

Eren grimaced. “Jean?”

“Dude, come on. I saw you almost kiss him,” Connie teased. 

“That didn’t happen,” Eren insisted. 

“Uh-huh. Anyway, he’s been third-wheeling Reiner and Bertholdt, so we’re hanging out. We might have alcohol, depends if he feels generous. Might have weed if I feel generous.”

“No weed, please. The smell… lingers and it bothers Levi.” 

Connie gave him a thumbs-up. “You got it, man; no weed, no reasons needed. Does that mean you’re in?”

“Sure.”

“Do you wanna play Monopoly or Clue?”

Eren thought about this for about a half-second. “Better question: do you have a place to hide a body?”

Connie understood his train of thought perfectly. “So we’re playing Clue…” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mikasa’s song is “[kiss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0keMZoj2Zak)” by the romanovs, and that's where the title comes from.


	48. My Girlfriend Is Wonderful And I Love Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bored games. Sleepy girls. Eren and Jean cuddle and sort of make up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter references some events from a side-story, [plum](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4146984), which i posted a while back. i strongly recommend you read it before this. Plum takes place during mikasa and sasha’s spring break road trip. 
> 
> warnings: underage drinking

“I’ll sacrifice my last token to summon the Dark Magician Girl in attack mode --”

“Fuck my ass.” Jean’s winning grin turned into a look of desolation; he really thought he’d turned it around. He thought he could finally beat Connie. But Connie always seemed to have an ace up his sleeve. Of course it was the exact card Jean had called _weak_ in their last game, and even though it had a lower attack than Jean’s own monster, Connie had that determined look on his face that showed he knew he was about to win. 

Connie was too good, too familiar with the strategy of all the cards he owned. He knew that, at some point, Jean would bring out the best card in his deck, and he knew that was the precise point at which Connie would destroy him. “-- and because I have two Dark Magicians in my graveyard, her attack is 2600. I add the spell card Horn of the Unicorn, which gives her another 700 attack points, bringing it up to 3300…” Connie smiled. “Don’t you ever talk shit about Dark Magician Girl.”

“Just fucking kill me already,” Jean said. He held his last card, a depressing Winged Dragon, Guardian of the Fortress, against his forehead. He had no face-down cards, nothing even remotely useful but the monster he had summoned, and he really thought that it would be enough. 

“Dark Magician Girl is now more than strong enough to take out your Blue Eyes White Dragon, and the rest of your life points. Dark Magician Girl, attack!”

Jean shared a look with Eren. After playing a few rounds of Clue, Eren had noticed the binder under Connie’s bed marked “Yu-Gi-Oh cards”, and suggested they play. Eren and Jean vaguely remembered the rules from playing as children, and quickly fashioned decks together out of the available cards, which ranged from mediocre to the overpowered, rare, and banned. Connie had stopped collecting them pretty young, though he still treasured them, so none of the newer, more ridiculous rules applied. 

Which didn’t matter. Connie had beaten them each five times with the same spellcasters deck, while Eren and Jean had swapped out cards each time, regretting more and more the decision to play with each loss. Even as Connie got drunker, his playing didn’t worsen at all. 

So Jean shared his look, and Eren gave an almost sympathetic one back. 

“You’re doing better, though! You managed to take out a lot of my life points.”

“You halved them to bring out the Dark Magician. Twice.”

“That is true,” Connie said, while he shuffled his deck back together. “Eren -- you up for another?” 

“How ‘bout I play Jean?” Eren suggested as an alternative. 

“How ‘bout no-one dies in my room?” Perfectly reasonable request, Connie thought. 

Eren groaned. 

“All right, then let’s paint our nails and talk about cute boys,” Connie suggested. 

“You’re straight,” Eren reminded him. 

Connie wiggled his hand. “Ish. It was a joke. I will paint your nails though.”

“Ish?” Eren repeated. 

“Ish?” Jean double-repeated. 

“Uh, yeah, ish. Nails? Or we could play poker or something, I have a deck of cards somewhere…”

“Since when are you ‘ish’?” Jean asked. 

“Since, like, a week ago. It’s not a big deal. Just, like, one guy.”

“Which guy?!” Eren and Jean asked in unison. They leapt forward, still halfway seated on the floor, getting in Connie’s face. 

Connie leaned back and fell onto his elbows. “Ow. Um.” He stared into the faces of his two friends. “Y-you’re gonna have to get me a _lot_ drunker if you want me to tell you that.” 

Jean reached for his backpack and pulled from its depths a full bottle of whiskey. “You drunk enough for cheap bourbon?” 

“I’ll get some cups.” 

\---

Across the street, in her own dorm, Mikasa was fast asleep, needing it desperately after a week of almost sleeplessness. She’d fallen asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, into a peaceful, dreamless slumber. 

Sasha, however, had slept through the last few days, not even going to class, and as such now she was wide awake, once again sharing Mikasa’s twin bed, and it felt right to be there. It felt more right than being in her own bed, in the room she supposedly shared with Connie, but all week she had just felt like a visitor there. Here, she felt like she was home. Sasha stared across the few dark inches between her face and Mikasa’s, their hands clasped together between them, and smiled. 

Over the last day, she’d spent most of her waking hours trying to figure out what kind of love, exactly, she felt for Mikasa. Of course something like that would take more than a day to really understand, but she felt like she had gotten somewhere with it. 

Part of what Sasha felt was romantic. She could be certain of that. She wanted to kiss Mikasa, to go on dates with her and hold her hand and say saccharine-sweet adorable things to flirt with her all the time. She wanted to say “I’m in love with you” while holding one another, eyes locked, perhaps a beautiful bright orange sunset behind them. 

Certainly she loved Mikasa platonically as well. That was how their relationship had started, a platonic but almost immediately intense and incredibly close thing, the sort of whirlwind best-friendship for which Sasha could never have prepared herself. And that was how she could expect it to continue -- sharing this bed, sharing their food, sharing their secrets, sharing everything in their lives and just generally enjoying one another’s company. Sasha wanted all that, too; wanted it no more or less than the romance. It was comfortable, very comfortable, and comfort _ing_ , and it made her happy. 

There was something sort of familial as well. Sasha didn’t have much family left; she’d as much as disowned her own after her most recent, disastrous visit, and Connie, her some-kind-of-cousin for whom she felt a sort of brotherly connection with how close they were raised, was probably the only person she was related to who she still considered as part of her life. Mikasa, too, didn’t have much in the way of a family. Eren and Armin were something like Mikasa’s siblings, but her parents were dead, her remaining adoptive guardian was someone she pretty much despised, and perhaps the eccentric cousin Sasha had met in their brief stay in New York City was Mikasa’s last tolerable relative. 

Sasha had always thought that home is where your family is -- so didn’t it follow that the reverse should be true as well? There was no home for Sasha quite like right here, right now, in the room she shared with Mikasa. Thus, Mikasa was her home; thus, Mikasa was her family. 

So, she felt every kind of love she could identify. The thing was, Sasha didn’t feel them separately. Not for Mikasa. No, it was all blended together, all these ways of caring about and feeling cared for by Mikasa, and what Sasha knew most strongly of all was that it didn’t matter _what_ she did with Mikasa, only that Mikasa was there. 

It was a selfish thing, she thought, to want to possess a person in such a way that you would accept any sort of relationship as long as they were in your life. 

“Hm?” Mikasa mumbled and stirred, her eyes opening just slightly and searching in the dark. “Sasha.” 

“D-did I wake you?” Sasha asked. Now that she knew about Mikasa’s superhero empathy thing, she had to wonder if strong emotions were enough to disturb her sleep. 

“You’re crush’n m’hands,” Mikasa slurred. 

Sasha noticed that her hands had clenched around Mikasa’s. “Sorry.” She loosened her grip until their fingers were gently laced together, barely holding on.

Mikasa stretched her sleepy fingers and then held on to Sasha a little tighter, just enough to be secure. “What’s wrong?” 

“Mn. Nothing.” It wasn’t a lie. Nothing was really wrong. She was used to thinking of herself as selfish. It wasn’t pleasant, exactly, but it wasn’t painful, even if it did sort of bother her sometimes. 

“What’re you thinking about?” Mikasa asked. She sensed that there was something Sasha needed to talk about, whether it was a _what’s wrong_ sort of thing or not. 

“Ah… Do you really want to know?”

“I asked.” 

Sasha couldn’t look her in the eye. “I was sort of thinking about the ways I love you…”

Mikasa didn’t expect the smile that crept onto her sleepy face when she heard that. “What about that made you squeeze my hands?” 

“I thought it was. Kind of selfish,” Sasha admitted. “To want you in my life so bad I don’t care what you are to me.” 

“That’s not selfish.” Mikasa squinted at her. “That’s pretty selfless. I think, at least.” 

“Oh.” Sasha wasn’t sure she could agree with that. “I guess I’m used to love being selfish in the first place. I mean, my family --”

“That wasn’t love,” Mikasa said. Her eyes, despite the little bits of sleep-crust in their corners, were dangerous. “That was, that was...” She had words. So many words. But they were words she couldn’t force onto Sasha, so she left her sentence unfinished. 

“It was, though? They did love me. They were just really bad at it, according to, well, anyone who believes love is supposed to be a good thing. I felt loved. But I’ve never really felt loved in a way that wasn’t selfish, and I didn’t love anyone in a way that wasn’t selfish. Even loving you, I, I want things from you. I like how we are, but I want more of it, and if I can’t get more of it, I start to want other things. Part of me wants you all to myself, all the time.” Sasha realised here that she had maybe said too much; she snapped her mouth shut. 

“Maybe love is selfish,” Mikasa said. “I don’t know. I don’t know what is love and what isn’t. But I don’t think being selfish is a bad thing. You have to want things for yourself in order for anything good to happen, right?” 

“I guess. But doesn’t it bother you?” 

“Are you going to force it on me?” Mikasa asked, already knowing the answer. 

“Of course not! I would never, to anyone--!”

“I know you wouldn’t. And as long as that’s true, I don’t mind. Wanting things isn’t bad, Sasha. Even if it’s not something you think you deserve. Asking for them isn’t either. Taking what isn’t yours, without permission, is usually not good, but that’s different. They’re not the same thing.” 

“I’ll… think about that,” Sasha said. 

“How long has this been bugging you?” Mikasa asked. “All week?”

Sasha shook her head as best she could against the pillow. “Longer. Dunno how long. Maybe since New York.” 

Mikasa let go of one of her hands, then reached for Sasha’s face, brushed back some hair out of her eyes. It kind of made Sasha’s heart flutter, which she felt kind of not awesome about, because she was trying to fall less in love with Mikasa, not more. But it seemed Mikasa didn’t mind. 

“Why’d you keep it in?” Mikasa asked. 

“I didn’t want you to think I expected something from you.” 

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Then there’s no need to hide.” Mikasa yawned. “You should sleep,” she said. “Don’t you have work tomorrow?”

“Mm.” Sasha acknowledged what she said; she’d called out sick all week, so she really would have to go tomorrow and probably grovel at her supervisor’s feet. 

“And, hey. If something’s bothering you, whatever it is, you can tell me. Especially if it’s about us. I really do want to keep you in my life, so, we need to talk about this kind of stuff.” 

“I’ll… try.”

“Good.” Mikasa leaned forward and brushed her nose against Sasha’s. It was the closest thing to a kiss she felt comfortable giving, but she knew Sasha would appreciate it. 

\---

Connie balanced an empty mug on his chest. Every once in a while he would roll onto his side, reach for the bourbon, pour himself larger and larger portions of it, down said drinks, and return to his place on his back. So far he’d had five, on top of the weird foreign beer and the Mike’s Hard from game time. 

It’d been at least four hours since they got back, maybe five, he reasoned -- and he’d eaten. Also, since he could actually consider that he maybe should stop drinking soon, he was definitely not too drunk. 

He doubted he was in a good state to be _standing_ but he was fine here on the floor. 

“You’ve had, like, five,” Eren said. He’d drank less, mostly because he was on the bed and thus farther from the drink, but he was also less used to it, and as such was significantly less sober. “Hey, hey, if you have five fifths of whiskey, does that mean you have a whole whiskey?” 

“A fifth is a _bottle_ , dum-- uh. Jackass,” Jean said, managing to catch himself. He, being legally allowed to drink, and having done so illegally for many years prior, knew how to pace himself better. He wasn’t exactly designated driver material here, but no-one was driving anywhere, and he was at least sober enough to know it was nearing time to cut the two first-years off. 

“Oh. Why do they call it a fifth?”

“It’s a fifth of a gallon.” 

“Oh. So a whole whiskey is a gallon?” 

Jean pressed his fingers against his eyes, starting to feel his contacts after a long day. Circle lenses were a fucking pain, but the red cat eyes looked cool, he thought, and fit with his image. Eren was wearing his glasses, and Jean realised for the first time that Eren’s eyes were different colours, which he thought was pretty cool, and why did Eren hide that with coloured contacts? “Yes, Eren, a ‘whole whiskey’ is a gallon,” he said, complete with air quotes and sarcasm. 

“Wooooow. I wonder if I could drink a whole whiskey.”

“Do _not_ do that.”

“Why not?”

“You will die.” 

“Heh. You’d like that.”

“I wouldn’t, actually,” Jean said. “You’re my friend. I like having you around.”

Eren made an odd noise at that, which Jean couldn’t figure out, but he ignored it. Probably the beginnings of some protest he was too drunk to follow through. 

“Hey, Connie,” Jean called.

“Uhh,” was Connie’s response.

“You never told us which guy it was.”

“Guy?” Connie mumbled, and then sat up. His mug (thankfully still empty) landed in his lap. “Oh! Guy! Whoa--” He put a hand to his head, slightly dizzy. “Lol,” he said. “You don’ wanna know,” he slurred. 

“Yeah, I really do.” 

“Heheh. Well, uh. Doesn’t matter, you don’t know him,” Connie said. “His name’s Dennis. He’s in my lab. He’s got, like, floppy hair, and always has this lil’ bit of stubble, and he’s from Brazil, or maybe Portugal, and he’s really fuckin’ good at math, and he always smells like olives and grass. His voice is all… really low and stuff, and loud but like he’s trying to be quiet and he’s just loud cause his voice is so low. Or like there’s a church inside him. I think he’s a senior? Or, like. Hell, he might be a grad student.”

It took Jean a moment to figure out the church comment, but he realised Connie was talking about the sort of acoustics in a large church or cathedral, where all sound might reflect back on itself. “A grad student? In Intro Engineering?” 

“I dunno. Maybe he’s one of those older dudes who goes to college later. He’s definitely older, he’s got these wrinkles by his eyes? His eyes are really pretty. They’re brown, a little lighter than mine, and they kinda sparkle.” 

This was starting to edge into adorable crush talk. Which… maybe made Jean a little uncomfortable. The thing with Marco still felt fresh -- not least because Marco had a new boyfriend, not even the same guy with whom he had apparently cheated on Jean, and Jean kept seeing them around together. But, Jean asked, because part of him actually really liked hearing about other people having nice fluttery feelings in their chest. It reminded him that life moved on, and hearts healed just like dick piercings did. 

“Heh, what if he’s older than Levi.” Connie nudged Eren’s foot where it dangled off the bed. “Think I have a chance?”

Eren grinned. “Yeah. Yeah! Go for it. Good luck.” 

“D’you even know if he likes guys?” Jean asked. Normally he would have said something along the lines of _Levi’s age difference is already kind of weird, maybe don’t_ but he was slightly less concerned with this concept when drunk. 

Connie sighed. “I dunno. He seems too pretty to be straight. But, you know. Statistically. Probably straight.” He sighed again. “It’s okay, I was fully prepared to just. Look at him. For the rest of the semester.” 

“Awww,” Eren whined. “I wanted to cheer you on.” 

“How about you, Eren? How’s your love life?” Connie asked. 

“Ehehe. My girlfriend is wonderful. And I love her. And my boyfriend is wonderful, and I love him too. And they’re fucking tonight, and it’s wonderful, and I love them, and I hope they love each other.”

“Love that you’re here just ‘cause both your partners are otherwise occupied,” Jean said, voice dripping with sarcasm as much as it dripped with alcohol. 

“I wanna watch them,” Eren blurted out. “And I wanna do them. Together.” 

“No offense man,” Connie said, “But I don’t wanna imagine that.” 

“Sorry.” No-one stopped Eren from talking about them, though, so he continued. “Armin’s so great. She’s great. She’s, like, the prettiest girl in the world, and she still thinks I’m something to look at, like, what?”

“You’re good looking, too,” Connie interrupted.

“You’re still mostly-straight, your opinion doesn’t count.”

“You _are_ good-looking,” Jean confirmed. 

“Ew,” Eren said. “Scuse you, I was talking about Armin. Like I was saying, she’s pretty. And she’s so good at everything. I mean, not everything, you know. No-one’s good at everything. But all the stuff I’m really shit at, like studying and explaining stuff and remembering things and dressing nice and making the bed and making people feel good about themselves, Armin’s good at that. Though she’s not good at making herself feel good about herself. But I’m good at that. And she loves the ocean so much, like you don’t even know. Probably more than I love art. And she loves me a lot, even more than the ocean. I don’t wanna brag but I can tell. It like, knocks me over all the time. How much she loves me. Wow. I knew her since we were almost babies and I still look at her every day and know her better and love her more. I wanna say I love her just as much as she loves me but I don’t think I can even compare. She’s so good at loving things, and people. 

“And if that wasn’t enough, I have Levi too. And he’s, you know, grumpy and weird but that’s something I love about him, you know? Like, aww, look, my grumpy weirdo, what a cutie. Except he doesn’t like being called cute. Or maybe he does like it? He makes a big deal of it but I’m not really sure. Either way, he is. And he’s so good at art. His paintings are beautiful, like, they’re really big dicks and boobs and stuff like that but they’re like… majestic dicks and boobs. And painted so well. I wish I could be that good. Maybe one day. And he’s got all these weird things about him and I’m learning so much every day ‘cause he’s been through a lot and I think it’s new for him to trust someone. But he trusts me. And he loves me. And I love him.

“I love them both so much, oh my god. I can’t believe I’m so lucky, I can love them both and they can love me both and maybe they can love each other and it’s okay. We can just. Do that.” Eren paused, a wild grin on his face. He hadn’t even noticed he laid down sometime during his speech. “I’m so lucky,” he repeated. 

“You dork,” Jean said, somewhat gruff but very endeared. 

“Don’t need comments from _you_ , Mister All-By-Myself.” 

“Don’t rub salt in the wound, asshole,” Jean grumbled. 

“Yeah, there are better uses for salt,” Connie said. “Like margaritas.” 

“Ooh, I want a margarita,” Eren said. 

“No more drinks for either of you,” Jean said, to a duet of groans. “Have some _water_. I dunno about you, Connie, but Eren and I have work in the morning.”

“Oh god. Fuck. We do,” Eren said. “Shit. Damn. I’m gonna be so hungover.” 

Jean sighed. “Yeah, give me your cups. I’m getting water for all of us.”

\---

Connie woke at about five in the morning with a searing headache, despite drinking water until he couldn’t stomach any more. He also awoke really, really needing to pee, so he did that, and when he got back he saw, by the light of his phone, Eren and Jean fast asleep in his bed. Together. Aww. He snapped a photo of this adorable display (they were _cuddling_ , like facing each other and hugging with their legs tangled together), took a couple ibuprofen, and then passed right the fuck back out on Sasha’s bed. 

Jean was the next to wake, and thank fuck, because if Eren had awoken first there may have been casualties. Luckily Jean had remembered to bring his contact case and taken out his contacts the night before, but his eyes still felt dry and burn-y. At least his head wasn’t pounding, and judging by the crease between Eren’s eyebrows (his face was _very_ close) Eren would not be so lucky. 

Jean slowly extracted himself from Eren’s embrace, and only after taking out a few ibuprofen from the bottle Connie left open did he gently shake Eren awake. 

Eren lashed out immediately, his hand coming for a swipe at the unknown intruder to his dreams. It didn’t connect, but when he realised it was Jean, he went for another, weaker slap to the face, which did connect but hurt about as much as a newborn kitten’s nose-boop. 

“My head feels like it’s been stabbed,” Eren said. 

“Here.” Jean handed over the pills and some water from the side table. 

“What’s this? Poison?” 

“Ibuprofen, you asshole.” Jean stood and left him to take the pills. “I’m heading to work, my shift starts in ten. I think you have a half hour or so?” he guessed. 

“Ugh. I feel gross.” 

Jean rolled his eyes and started to drag Eren out of the bed. “Let’s go. I’ll get you a medium coffee with two shots of espresso in a large cup, and if we get there before my boss I’ll tell you where we keep the secret Bailey’s.” 

“The cafe has alcohol?”

“No. That’s why it’s a secret.” Jean tugged again, and managed to get Eren out of bed. They still wore their clothes from the night before, and both had their glasses on instead of their usual contacts, and the red in their eyes clearly stated hangover even if only one of them had a headache. It was incredibly likely that upon seeing the two of them, Sasha would promptly assume they’d fucked and may of may not flip out, depending on whether she believed Eren’s relationship was a closed triad. 

Jean wasn’t actually sure himself. So he asked. “Hey, Eren. Are you and Armin and Levi exclusive?”

Eren shrugged. “I think I talked about it with Levi once, and we weren’t, but that was before he and Armin were a thing. She and I haven’t really been looking at anyone else, so it didn’t matter for us. Why?” he asked. “Don’t tell me you--”

“I am not asking you out.” 

“Oh, ew, don’t even make me think of that. I thought you were thinking about asking Armin.” 

“I wouldn’t be opposed to it, she’s great, but I wasn’t. I was just curious.” 

“Huh.” 

“Since Sasha will be there, and we’re showing up in yesterday’s clothes, you know, she might think--”

“No! Nope. Do not go there. She will think _nothing_.” 

In silence, they left the dorm, crossed the street, and headed for the campus center. Once in the cafe, Jean put on his apron and turned on the machines, running Eren’s campus card for the price of a medium coffee. Just as he pulled the (large) cup for Eren’s drink, his supervisor came in the door, followed a moment later by Sasha, who’d run in at the last possible second to be on time. 

“Looks like you won’t be getting your secret,” Jean said to Eren. “I can give you a special latte to make up for it.” 

“Sure, just wake me up when it’s done.” Eren sat on one of the bar stools and pillowed his head on his arms on top of the counter. 

Jean steamed whole milk, added coffee, two shots of espresso as promised, and a few pumps of various syrups that would work together to make the drink taste almost, but not quite, like it actually had Bailey’s in it. “Maybe I’ll bartend during grad school,” he mused, already thinking two years ahead. “I’m pretty good at mixing drinks.” 

Sasha, who had just come back behind the counter after offering her repeated apologies to the supervisor, agreed. “You are. Better than me, probably.”

“Hey, you’re new. You’ll get better.” Jean popped the lid onto Eren’s drink and passed it over the counter. “Here you go. Get to work.” 

Eren took a sip before heading out. “Wow. That’s really good.” He stared at the drink, conflicted. Jean had just given him a large specialty coffee for the price of a medium self-serve, which was at most half the price. And it was fantastic, steamed milk and flavour shots and everything, just the right temperature. Even whipped cream. It was probably something Jean had made for himself before, some special thing he got with his employee discount (also known as “free if you make it yourself”). 

“What, something wrong?” Jean asked. “Is it too cold?”

“No, it’s. It’s perfect.” Eren pursed his lips. “Why do you do all this nice shit for me?”

“What do you mean?” 

“Giving me water and pills, getting me to work on time, making me really good coffee… And all your other stuff. I treat you like shit. And, I mean, you are an asshole sometimes. I still haven’t forgiven you for what you said.” 

“Didn’t expect so.”

“But, like, I know I will. How fucked is that? I can’t stand you, but you’re doing all this nice stuff for me, enough that I’ll probably actually start to enjoy your company someday.” Eren looked Jean in the eye, finally. “Why?” 

Jean shrugged. “I told you, you’re my friend. Yeah, you treat me like shit. But I get where you’re coming from. There are some things that just piss me off, enough to really make me hate someone, so I can’t fault you for that. I think the way you act towards me is actually, in some ways, showing you’re a good person; you won’t put up with my shit.” 

“That’s crap and you know it.” 

“Okay. It’s crap.” Jean grinned. “I still do think of you as my friend, for what it’s worth. And maybe that’s not great for me, befriending a guy who treats me badly, but a part of me is really happy about how much it pisses you off.” 

Eren gave him a middle finger with a smile. “Fuck you too.” Jean returned the gesture, upping it with two middle fingers. Sasha watched them, clearly amused. 

As Eren left the cafe, he felt like they’d somehow come to some sort of mutual understanding. It was weird, and didn’t really make sense. He was actually probably more confused than before. But he also was a little more okay with being confused. 

In Eren’s eyes, Jean was an asshole. He was the guy that didn’t realise Mikasa wasn’t into him until she plainly said she was asexual; the guy who mocked (as Eren understood it) Eren’s choice to pursue art as a career; the guy who used slurs in front of people they specifically targeted. He was also the guy who did his best to fix everything he fucked up, made sure his friends were always comfortable, and even gave pep talks to people he barely knew. The asshole Jean who pissed Eren off to no end was also the first man to ever show up in his sex dreams (though Eren would never, ever admit it). 

Eren treated Jean like shit, because the particular ways in which Jean had fucked up were among those that had their own special Eren-buttons to push. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to stop; it was almost second nature at this point. But maybe, now that he’d actually realised the ways Jean tried to be nice to him despite everything, Eren could tone it down a little, make it less hateful insults and more playful jabs. 

He sipped his coffee again. Damn, that was good.

Eren had only been at work for an hour, coffee long gone anyway, headache fading little by little, before his phone’s screen lit up with a text message from Levi. _Do you have snapchat?_

 _I do_ , Eren responded, and then gave his username. Within moments Levi had added him, and a few moments after that, a photo came in. 

Eren raised his eyebrows, knowing full well what Levi and Armin had planned the night before. _u know I’m at work right?_

_So?_

_I can’t look at ur nudes at work_. Which Eren thought was completely unreasonable, given the several clearly erotic nudes on display inside the museum. And beyond what was on display, too; he had been to the Center for Works on Paper and some of the collection could really only be described as porn. 

_Its sfw_ , Levi assured, so Eren opened the photo after making sure no-one was behind him, just in case. 

It was safe for work, in fact, but only barely. Levi had taken a photo of himself and a fast-asleep Armin, both of them clearly at least shirtless, if not fully nude, but Armin was mostly covered by a blanket and everything below the shoulders was out of frame. Still, it was clear what they’d been up to; Armin’s hair was a tangled mess and the sheets were wrinkled to hell. There was a faint blush across Armin’s cheeks, even in her sleep, and Levi was starting to look better as his terrible, accidental fake tan faded and his hair started to grow back in. 

Eren screenshotted it with a second left on the timer. He texted Levi back: _well aren’t you two adorable._

 _Shut your fuck_ , Levi responded eloquently, and after that, _ing mouth._

Eren sent him a heart emoji. 

_Idk how to send hearts but love you too_ , Levi said.

Eren smiled, but opted not to comment on Levi’s obvious good mood. Instead, he asked: _good sex?_

Another Snapchat notification came in; this time, it was a slightly less safe for work picture of Levi’s bedside trash can, in which appeared to be three used condoms. 

_3? congradulations_ , Eren texted. Levi sent him a series of slash marks, which confused the hell out of Eren. _what’s that mean?_ It was a little strange, asking someone older than him what the meaning of a probably-emoticon was. 

_means shut up_

Eren doubted this for some reason, but decided not to pursue it. 

_come home soon_ , Levi said. 

“Aww,” Eren said out loud, and the gift shop cashier shushed him. 

Another snap came through, this one a video, followed by a text: _this one’s sfw too but theres sound._

Eren opened it, the sound playing through the single earbud he already had in, as he was required to have at least one ear open at all times at work. 

It was Levi and Armin again, of course, but this time Armin was newly awake, smiling up at the camera. Surprising Eren, they both sang to him, completely off key from one another, and he wasn’t sure what Levi was doing could really be classified as singing, but Armin carried him well. “ _You are my sunshine, my other sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray…”_ The video cut off there, the app not allowing a recording any longer, but Eren knew the song well enough for the next line. 

_love you too_ , he texted back to Levi. _both of you._ And another heart. 

God, he loved them so much. 


	49. Love Arrow, Shoot!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where’d those three used condoms come from?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapters from here on out will be posted on fridays. not necessarily every friday, but they will go up on fridays. 
> 
> the warns: gratuitous fucking, sex work related slurs (used by an ex-sex worker), body image, implied body dysphoria (and euphoria)

Levi and Armin walked back to the apartment side-by-side; despite the abnormally warm evening, Levi’s arm was around Armin’s back, hand on her hip, and Armin’s hand was in his back pocket. Every so often one would glance at the other, linger a moment, and then look away. 

Armin had slipped her hand into Levi’s pocket without thinking, only realising after she’d settled into that warmth that _it was Levi’s ass_ , but she found she didn’t mind at all, and Levi certainly didn’t ask Armin to remove it. Mostly she just let her hand linger there, but at one point a pedestrian walk signal changed from a blinking red hand to a static one and Armin accidentally grabbed a handful of Levi-butt when she tensed and pulled him to a stop at the curb. While they waited for the light to change, Levi tilted his head up to Armin’s and she took the hint and planted a smooch right on his lips, both mouths closed, in the dark but scandalously public. 

_It’s exciting_ , both of them thought, of being with the other. 

Armin’s fingers curled again, and Levi made a quiet noise against her lips. “Not now,” he murmured, voice rough. “I don’t mind, but the people driving might.” 

“Thought you’d say something more like ‘fuck them’,” Armin said, though she backed off. 

Levi leaned up and pecked her lips again. “If they have a problem with us kissing, fuck them. But grabbing my ass, eh, I can kinda understand. ‘Sides,” he said, “it’s almost our turn to walk.” 

Right on time, the walk signal changed, and they crossed the street. At the end of the next block, the pair turned left down Levi’s street. They climbed the stairs one by one, Armin leading, but at the apartment door Armin returned her hand to Levi’s pocket and gave a third little squeeze. Levi dropped his keys and, feeling like the virgin he hadn’t been in a very long time, he sighed and knelt down to pick them up, feeling Armin’s eyes on him all the way down. 

“I can feel you stare,” he said. 

“Can you blame me?” Armin said. “You have a nice body.”

Levi did that little huffy thing he does when he wants to laugh but isn’t so amused that he’s willing to break his Image™ for a real laugh. “Yeah, yeah. You want a nice body to look at, stare at yourself.” 

“Huh?”

Levi managed to get his front door open without any more mishaps as Armin stood there confused. “Make no mistake, I know I’m hot. But you blow me away.” 

“Huh?” Armin repeated. She looked down at herself -- red pumps, black knee-high socks that said “BAD ASS” on the back with an arrow pointing up, a little peek of too-pale shaved thigh before the hem of Mikasa’s old black-denim-red-piping dress that fit almost everywhere except where it was a little loose in the chest, even bulked up with the bra, once Levi’s, that Armin had worn and slightly stuffed for the occasion. Her arms, only a little thicker than bony, framed her sides, with a white sweater clutched in the hand that hadn’t been in Levi’s pocket for the last mile. Nothing about that really screamed ‘hot’ to her. Not out of the ordinary. A few strands of pale hair freed from her ponytail dropped into her line of sight. She thought of her face, rounded with stubborn baby fat, thick eyebrows, thin lips… she supposed her wide eyes and scrunchy nose could be considered _cute_ , but _hot_? Sure, she knew she had her various body image issues, but even beyond that, she thought of herself as pretty average-looking. 

Levi pushed open his door and took her hand to bring her in. “What do you mean, ‘huh’? I’d love to have a body like yours.”

Armin was completely baffled at this point. “But, but you --” She gestured at his body. “You have that.”

“Do you want to look like me?” 

Armin blinked. “Um. No. No offense.” 

“None taken.”

“I like your body, it’s just not for me.”

“Armin, I said no offense taken. But, listen, I can tell you, because I know -- I only look good like this. If I’m not jacked up like this, I’m a twig with a too-thick cock who bruises easily and looks like I’m on drug withdrawal even when I’ve been clean for years, or if I’m chubby that makes my head too small for my body.”

“You’ve been chubby?” Armin tried to imagine that. It was not easy. 

“Yes. While I was in correction I blew up like a balloon ‘cause it was the first time in my life I’d ever had consistent meals. I lost the weight in college, I was scrawny for a while, and I didn’t really get my muscle back until after I stopped doing sex work.”

“That was so long ago, though.”

“And yet my face looks the same, I’m the same height as I was, and I can tell you with absolute certainty the only good look on me is this one. But you, you have a beautiful face --”

Armin maybe squeaked at that. 

“--and you have a body that would looks good at any state, including the one it’s in. I know you have trouble seeing it ‘cause you’re in it, but you’re sexy as fuck. Not to mention you’re like a ray of sunshine when you’re able to actually enjoy yourself.” 

Armin blushed; she lifted a hand to try and hide it but it didn’t work at all. “F-fine, prove it.”

“I was planning to.” Levi shut and locked the front door behind Armin; he took her sweater and rubbed it between his fingers a bit, just feeling the well-worn, soft cotton fiber, before he draped it over a chair at his kitchen table. “Shoes off,” he reminded Armin; he had already taken off his own while they were talking. 

Armin stepped out of her heels and left them on the mat by the door. She felt Levi’s arms come around her waist from behind, and his lips press against the back of her neck. Armin didn’t know this, but Levi was standing on his tiptoes to reach. 

“That tickles,” Armin mumbled. “But don’t stop.” She looked ahead, to the painting of Eren that was down to final details. It was almost like Eren was there with him -- except not at all. That would be totally different. Eren would already be kissing her. He was so instinctively drawn to physical affection; if he was just watching there would have to be a very good reason for it. 

Levi didn’t stop. He pulled her close, lips moving slowly up and down the side of her neck, over her collar to her shoulder and back. He raised his right hand to pull the band out of her hair and then ran his fingers through it. 

“You can pull if you want,” Armin said, barely even a whisper, but Levi heard and his gentle fingers got a little rougher, though maybe not as much as Armin might have wanted. 

He made up for it though, by grazing his teeth over her neck. 

“That! Tickles!” Armin repeated, squirming a little. 

“Should I stop?”

She shook her head. Levi did it again, then peppered more kisses over her shoulder. He bit into the curve of her shoulder, not too hard but a little harder at her pleasured gasp. “That’s nice,” Armin said (understatement that it was). She raised her hand to Levi’s head but found only hat when she rested it there. Knowing he probably wouldn’t want it off yet, she lowered her hand to the back of his head, where the stubbly hair felt like his usual undercut. 

“Where do you want to do this?” Levi asked. “Couch, bed, wall, floor…”

“Bed works.” Armin slipped out of his arms and led him to the bedroom, facing forward to hide the goofy smile on her face. 

“I was kind of hoping you would pick the wall.”

“Why?” 

“Wanted to fuck against a mirror, so you can see yourself how I see you.” 

Armin stumbled a little. “That’s a little kinky for our first time!” Not that she didn’t like the idea, but they had a lot of ground to cover before mirror sex. “Just, I don’t know, take a video if you want me to see…” She tugged Levi into the bedroom. 

Levi squinted at Armin. “Is that… _less_ kinky?” He spun her around for a hug, ran his hands up Armin’s back looking for the top of her zipper. 

“I don’t know.” Armin arched her back as she felt her zipper come down, and the straps of her dress slide off her shoulders. It pooled at her feet and she immediately went for Levi’s white belt while he lifted his hat out of the way and kissed her.

Levi’s belt came off, his shirt untucked, and he opened up the buttons while Armin unzipped his pants and knelt down as she pushed them to the ground. 

“No underwear?” she asked, her face at about his waist. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before, but it shocked her anyway. 

“Well, I _did_ wear some,” he said. “I was hoping to surprise you with a nice G-string, but the damn thing was too tight and it snapped after an hour or so. It’s in my back pocket.” 

“This is surprising enough.” Armin reached into the pockets and sure enough, there was a black thong, really just a triangle of lace with some string attached, and one of the hip-strings was indeed snapped at the back. In his other pocket was a condom. Armin held the packet up. “Did you expect we’d need this before we got back?” 

Levi shrugged. “Can’t hurt. Mostly I had it to keep me excited.” 

Excited, he was; his cock was already starting to wave hello to Armin’s face. “Can I suck you?” she asked. 

“Mm-hm.” 

“Do I need this?” Armin waved the condom packet between her fingers. 

“Not really. I haven’t fucked anyone since Eren. But you can if you want.” Levi finished unbuttoning his shirt but left it draped on his shoulders. It was a good look for him. 

“Rather not.” Armin let the condom drop to the ground and grasped Levi’s cock instead. She stroked him a few times, pushing back his foreskin, admiring the flushed head and the needy moan that he trapped between his lips. 

“What was that?” Armin asked, with a smile. “I didn’t hear you, could you speak up?” 

“Ffffuck you,” Levi bit out. He leaned back and his shoulders hit the closed bedroom door. 

There was… danger, in Armin’s eyes, the kind of danger that Levi had always been a little too attracted to. Since he was young he’d flirted with danger, and now danger was wrapping her lips around his cock, big blue eyes staring up at him, daring him to watch her suck him down inch by inch. A bra strap slipped off her shoulder; she ignored it, or she noticed and left it like that on purpose. 

Levi didn’t know what Armin would do if he looked away, but he worried about what _he_ might do if he didn’t. 

He chanced it, closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the door and just listened to the quiet suckling noises that echoed far too loud in the otherwise silent bedroom, crawling into his ears, causing a tickle that travelled down the middle of his chest and into his cock. 

Armin let her eyes fall shut when Levi looked away, and concentrated on the cock in her mouth; Levi tasted rather nice, a little less, hmm, salty than Eren did. He probably washed his dick a little more thoroughly, Armin thought, not that it made that much difference to her. More so she noticed that Levi’s cock was thicker than Eren’s, and though it was shorter she didn’t think she’d be able to get the whole thing in her mouth because she definitely couldn’t swallow around the tip. But, judging by Levi’s ever-sweetening noises, that wouldn’t be a problem. He was enjoying it just fine. Besides, she didn’t want to make him come just yet. 

Armin pulled back from Levi’s cock and licked her lips before diving back in. She sucked on the head, pressed the tip of her tongue into the slit, then licked underneath and bobbed her head forward and back a few times. Armin heard the scrape of nails against the door, felt a hand tangle into her hair as Levi whined, and based on Armin’s physical reaction she assumed her hearing receptors had temporarily relocated to her dick. Part of her was kind of glad she’d worn loose-fitting underwear, because she didn’t feel particularly restricted despite her raging erection -- only Levi’s hand in her hair, clenched to pull the strands while also holding her in place, was any sort of restriction. 

Still, a turned on Levi was not a particularly strong Levi, and Armin pulled away from him with ease. “Bed,” she said. “And you really can record me if you want.” 

Levi took a moment to breathe before he pushed off the door. He bent down and took his phone out of his front pants pocket, feeling a little rush of blood to his head. “I do want. On your back?” 

“Mm.” Armin stood and took the few steps to the bed, flopping down on her back, while Levi flicked on the light. She waited for Levi, allowed him to admire her for a few moments, but then realised he was staring and started to awkwardly try and cover herself. “Why are you staring…” 

“Because you’re gorgeous.” 

Levi wasn’t usually so forward with his compliments, so Armin didn’t believe him at first. 

“I mean it. You’re beautiful.” Levi got on the bed and crawled over her, his shirt still framing him. “I could stare at you for days.” 

Armin turned pink in the face. “A-ah.” 

“Good thing I have this,” he said, waving his phone in front of her face. “For later, though.” He let the phone fall the the bed. “What do you want? I’ll do anything you ask for.” 

“Anything?”

“Just about. I doubt you could come up with something I wouldn’t do.” 

Armin considered this a challenge. “Would you eat me out?” 

“You mean --”

“My asshole. Would you lick it?”

“I.” Levi paused. “I’ve actually never done that before. Have you? Has Eren?”

“No,” Armin said to both questions. “And don’t worry about it, that wasn’t a serious request.” She was curious, of course, but she knew about Levi’s thoughts on cleanliness and understood maybe he wouldn’t want to go there. 

“I might do it. I’ll think about it. If you want.” Levi’s hand absently rubbed up and down her thigh. “Anything else?” 

“Well. I guess I just assumed, your dick, my ass.” 

“Is that what you want?” 

Now that he asked, Armin thought about it. “Maybe? I don’t know. That’s what I’m used to doing, with Eren, but I think it might be a little weird with you?” She put a hand over her face. “Sorry, that’s…”

“That’s fine.” Levi kissed the back of her hand. “We can do something else, and if you want we can try that later.” 

“Okay.” Armin still had her eyebrows drawn together, and Levi noticed her erection had gone down a bit while they talked. 

“Do you not like it?” he asked, kind of on a whim. “Anal, I mean.” 

“I do!” Armin assured him. 

“...But you like other things better,” Levi added. At least, when it came to others’ emotions in the bedroom, Levi was pretty good at reading people. 

Armin opened her mouth, looking like she was going to refute him, but her indignation passed and she sighed instead. “I guess so. Kind of. I don’t know, I like it, I really like it, but sometimes I kind of wish Eren would just… use his fingers, and let me suck him.” 

“You should tell him that.” 

She nodded. “Um. Can you… do that?”

“Yes.” Gladly. Very gladly. “Anything else?” 

Armin fidgeted a little. “Eren does this thing… I don’t know why it feels so good. I mean I do, but. He, like, squeezes, my chest? Like this.” She reached out and placed her palm over Levi’s pectoral, curling her fingers a little. “It feels like… oh.” She squeezed again. There was definitely hard muscle there, but over top of it, a softness Armin couldn’t quite identify, and the skin was more pliant than she was used to. “That’s softer than I expected.”

Levi snorted. “Yeah. A lot of people say that.” 

Armin dropped her hand and raised her eyebrows, having temporarily forgotten that Levi was significantly more widely experienced in this whole sex department than she was. 

“When people paid to fuck me, they always seemed to really like my nipples. And if you play with nipples a lot, they sort of soften.”

“Oh, that’s, good to know.” She reached up and brushed her fingers over the unexpectedly soft skin again. “Do you like it?” 

Levi shrugged. “I like everything. When I’m turned on, everything feels good. So yes.”

“Is there something that feels particularly good?”

“If I was going to pick one thing that I like more than anything else, it’s taking a cock up my ass.” 

“Ah. Well.” Armin wasn’t sure how she felt about that yet. It wasn’t really a solid ‘no’, but she never considered it seriously, being on the other end. “I’ll think about it.” 

“Don’t worry about it.” Levi kissed Armin’s nose. “You ready?” 

Armin nodded. She placed her hands on either side of Levi’s face and held him in place for a kiss. 

Almost immediately, Levi pushed his tongue into Armin’s mouth; he sensed she was someone who held back a lot and would probably appreciate deep, messy kisses. By the way she responded he figured he was right. Armin opened her mouth to let him in and licked his tongue, tilted her head for a better angle to move her lips against his. Her arms went around his neck; his hands settled on her waist and after a few moments of wet tongues and lips moving against one another, he slid his hands up her sides, stopping when he heard her breath hitch. 

Unknown to Levi, he had found the same “tickle spot” Eren liked to take advantage of; acting on instinct alone, Levi pressed his fingers in that space between ribs, until Armin moaned her sweet arousal right into his mouth. 

“That sounds nice,” Levi teased. 

“Well that feels nice,” Armin mumbled back, followed by a whine as he did it again. “Fuck, help me up,” she demanded, and Levi helped her sit up so she could unhook her bra and toss it and its foam inserts to the floor. Levi trailed his hand down her belly, and Armin threw her arms back around his neck and kissed him as he cupped his palm over her clothed erection. 

“How’s that?” Levi asked. 

“F-feels nice,” Armin repeated, stuttering. “I’ll--” she started to move, intending to do the same to him, to his exposed cock, but he stopped her. 

“Mm-mm. Lay down.” Levi still straddled Armin’s lap, and when she did lay flat again he spread his legs a little wider and sank down, rubbing his cock against the front of her undies. “Haah!” 

“Ah!” How does that feel so good?, Armin thought, because it wasn’t like it was some spectacularly creative thing that hit all her secret spots. But maybe, sometimes, the simple things were the best things. Levi’s cock rubbed against hers again, dragging the cotton of Armin’s undies over her skin when he grinded down a little harder. She lifted her knees a little and spread her legs, and the next roll of Levi’s hips felt even better. He leaned down and pressed his face into her neck, mouthing at the skin; this close, Armin could hear his quiet whines alongside her panting breaths. She lifted her hips to meet him and they both groaned at the rough motion, Levi’s hands fisting in the sheets, Armin’s fingers digging into Levi’s back enough that if her nails weren’t so short she’d scratch him. 

Levi tried to focus on Armin’s pleasure, but he couldn’t deny he was coming undone as well. Not that it took much, or ever had, to get him off. He had a sensitive body and an incredibly high sex drive, so it was only natural he should put his all into making it good for Armin, if anything and everything would work for him. So he untangled his fingers from the sheets and put his hands on her chest, kneading the skin, inching higher until the pads of his fingers pressed into her nipples and she sighed. 

Levi thrust himself against her again, pinched her nipples, revelled in Armin’s unabashed moan. Revelled enough to moan right back, to kiss her collarbone, to whisper a request to mark her, to bite and suck when Armin gave him permission. His hands continued to massage her chest, which heaved with Armin’s deep breaths; every so often Levi squeezed fistfuls of her flesh in his palms. He listened to Armin chant his name over and over and he said hers right back -- _Levi. Armin. Levi. Armin._

Armin didn’t know when her hands left Levi’s back but she found herself pushing down the front of her underwear, freeing her cock to rub directly against Levi’s. She gasped when Levi’s foreskin caught against the head of her cock, and she left the waistband of her undies to dig into the underside of her balls while she took both their erections in her hands. “Fffuck, fuck, Levi,” she moaned, and she nudged her chin against his cheek until he emerged from the crook of her neck and kissed her, hard, bruising, swelling both their lips. “Could come like this,” Armin gasped, and a few harsh breaths later added, “F-finger me.” 

“Fuck, yeah.” Levi reached for his nightstand, stuck his hand in the top drawer and found there weren’t any disposable gloves left in the box. He growled -- he’d had plenty when he prepped himself for Eren that first time two weeks earlier, used one without even having to think about it, but by using them for painting as well he went through them so fast. He grabbed a condom instead, tore it open and stuck his middle finger against the tip. This would be a little awkward, well, a little more awkward than sex already was, but Levi had a policy of not butting ( _putting_ , but with a coincidentally appropriate typo) anything in an asshole without a barrier. “What do you usually start with? One or two?” he asked, while rearranging their legs. 

“T-two,” Armin stammered. “I’m used to it.” 

Levi rolled the condom down over his index and middle fingers. “What’s your max?” he asked, curious, as he grabbed the bottle of lube that was, miraculously, still about three-quarters full. 

“Four,” Armin said, smiling a little, proud of herself. “You?”

“I’ve been fisted a few times,” Levi said, not even thinking about the fact that that wasn’t a super common thing until he saw Armin’s eyes bug out. “Sorry.” He slicked up the condom and moved his hand down between their bodies. 

“Don’t, that’s. Impressive.” 

Levi smiled, and he leaned down to kiss her again. He pressed his fingers against Armin’s hole, which twitched at the contact, and then she relaxed and he could feel it but he didn’t push in yet. 

“It’s warm,” Armin mumbled. “Usually cold.”

“Ssh. Don’t think about it.” Levi kissed her again. “Just feel it. Enjoy it.” He locked their lips together and teased her, circling her hole, getting her nice and slick around the edges before he started to press in. He sucked on her tongue, swallowed her moan when his fingers finally entered her. 

“Mmph!” Armin tried to say Levi’s name, but his lips never moved from hers. She inhaled sharply through her nose as her ass stretched around the tips of Levi’s fingers. He wiggled them a little bit. “Mm!” Armin’s hips jerked up and Levi’s fingers sunk in deeper, faster than she was ready for, up to the second knuckle. “Fuck!” Armin said as she tore her mouth away from Levi’s. “Ow. W-wait.” She cringed, obviously in pain. 

“Hey, it’s okay.” Levi placed his free left hand gently on her hip, eased her back down onto the bed, making sure to keep his fingers from moving too much. He rubbed her lower belly while she gasped, knowing from experience that if he withdrew his fingers it would probably just hurt more. “Breathe. Slowly, with me. In…” He exaggerated a deep breath, and waited for Armin to breathe with him before exhaling. “Out… in… out…” He kissed her cheek, her jaw, and sat up a little to look at where his fingers were half inside her. It didn’t look like he’d seriously injured her, but he recognised now that his fingers, like his cock, were probably a little thicker than hers or Eren’s, and he maybe shouldn’t have started with two. Definitely not without being more careful. “Tell me how you feel.” 

“It. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Just.” Armin took a deep breath again. “Surprised me.” 

“Can I keep going?”

Armin nodded enthusiastically. “You’re more gentle than I expected.”

“Is that a bad thing?” He pulled out his fingers and added more lube -- it could only help. 

“No, but I kind of wanted you to be a little rougher? I won’t break.”

“I won’t be gentle for long then. Just until I’m not going to hurt you.” It always seemed obvious to Levi, to be gentle with people until he knew how much they could take. He knew his limits, had pushed them higher and higher to the point where they didn’t matter, which was why he generally let people use him pretty roughly and used himself the same way. But he didn’t know Armin’s limits, so he was gentle. 

“I said, I won’t break,” Armin repeated, more forcefully, but Levi held firm. He entered her again, only up to the first knuckle, pulled his fingers out slowly, and slipped them back in at just as painstaking a pace. Armin wrapped her fingers around Levi’s wrist, the one holding her hip down, and tugged; when he let her pull him, she directed his hand to her mouth and started to suck on his fingers. She closed her eyes, enjoying it, soft suckling sounds reaching Levi’s ears while her swollen pink lips worked at his fingers the same way she sucked his cock not long ago. 

“Fuck. That’s hot.” Levi pushed his fingers just a little deeper, almost past the knuckle, and Armin whined. When he drew his fingers out, she lifted her hips again, this time intentionally, and forced his fingers all the way in. 

Armin’s eyes flew open and she opened her mouth. “ _Aah!”_ she screamed, and Levi swore, thinking he’d let her get hurt again, but her hips jerked once more, chasing pleasure. “G-good.” 

“Good?” She’d seemed in pain at first, but Levi couldn’t mistake her grin for anything other than utter bliss. 

“Good. More. Please.” Armin closed her eyes again and moaned, her lips closing back over the digits in her mouth as Levi rocked his hand into her ass, his fingers slightly curled. 

“Where’d you get that idea?” Levi asked, referring to Armin sucking on his fingers; she opened her eyes just slightly, the playful look she gave him telling him all he needed to know before blue disappeared behind her eyelids once again. _Porn_. 

He let her do it for a while, watching his fingers slide in and out of her mouth, in and out of her ass; Levi groaned, his ignored cock leaking a bit onto the duvet. He knew how to get out cum stains so it was fine, and he could appreciate the sight of his cock curving up from the bed next to his hand pleasuring Armin. 

“Feel good?” Levi asked. 

Armin bit him. 

Okay, so she actually just slightly scraped her teeth against his fingers, but the meaning was there. _Do you need to fucking ask?_

He pressed his thumb under her balls as he thrust two fingers into her, hard, and that time she actually did bite him, completely by accident. Armin’s thighs tensed, and her cock twitched. She opened her mouth and moaned. 

“You’re so beautiful,” Levi said, partly because she needed to hear it, but mostly because it was true. Most people, Levi thought, looked pretty good at some point during sex, but Armin was radiant. She let go of her inhibitions more than he’d ever seen her do otherwise, and it was obvious how much she enjoyed herself. Her skin glowed with sweat and an all-over pink flush. Her hair spilled over the pillow looking like a halo. Her eyes, when open, were piercing, their bright sky blue turned electric; when closed, she looked peaceful, even in ecstasy, and maybe it was because her anxiety couldn’t touch her here. (Levi wished he was so lucky -- up until the throes of orgasm itself, That Voice nagged at the back of his head.) Armin’s back arched off the bed, and when Levi withdrew his hand from her mouth she licked her swollen lips and stared at him. 

_Beautiful_. 

He trailed the tips of his wet fingers over her jaw and down the column of her throat, down the middle of her chest, the circled around a nipple; Armin’s saliva wiped off on her skin and turned cold when Levi blew on the areas he’d just touched. Armin gasped, and moved her hips to fuck herself on his other hand, and he grasped at her skin again. He pinched her nipple between his thumb and the knuckle of his index finger and pulled up, then let it go and massaged the skin a little roughly. 

Armin’s hand flew to her cock and she grasped it tight. “I’m gonna come,” she said, and from her tone Levi couldn’t tell if she was happy or sad about it, but he could guess. “H-harder.” She lifted up her legs and stroked herself, rough, dry, without rhythm. 

Levi slid his hand back up her neck and behind her head, tangling in her hair; he kissed her rough and thrust his fingers into her hard enough he pushed her hips up a little each time. Armin came with her tongue in Levi’s mouth, with a shriek that he swallowed happily. 

For all that Armin knew as it happened, her orgasm may well have done her homework, washed her laundry, and cooked the two of them a nice dinner by the time she caught her breath, because time didn’t make sense for a moment and neither did gravity for that matter. She clung to Levi, took a hesitant breath, and started shaking. “Th-that was amazing. How was that amazing? You didn’t do anything that special.” 

“It’s magic,” Levi answered, as he wiggled his fingers over the trash can until the condom fell off. 

“Magic?”

“Sex magic. I’m an incredibly powerful witch.” 

“Is this about your LARPing?” 

“What?”

“Eren told me you LARP.”

“I don’t. I think I said that as a joke -- Hanji used to, so I’m defensive.” 

“That’s sweet. You’re sweet.”

“Fuck you, I am not.” 

“Hmm, you did fuck me. Really well.” Armin nuzzled Levi’s cheek. “I’ll do you in like a minute. I just gotta, stop shaking. And you’re very sweet.” 

Levi didn’t fight her. He kissed her instead, nice and slow. Armin giggled into the kiss, then embraced him. 

When he leaned back, she said, “You even taste sweet. Like strawberries.” 

Levi glared. 

“What are you gonna do? Spank me?” Armin teased. 

“Maybe.”

“You promise?” 

Levi tugged Armin so they were both laying on their sides, and delivered one not-very-hard smack to her ass. Armin made a noise he couldn’t quite describe; it was kind of like buzzing with her teeth, was the closest he could come up with. She tucked her head in between his neck and the pillow. “That felt weird!” 

“Everything to do with your butt is gonna feel weird for a few hours.”

“Oh, I know. It’s a different weird. I feel like it should hurt, but it doesn’t really, and it makes my butt jiggle, and I feel really empty down there and kind of tingly.” 

“Hm. Your pillow talk is cute.” 

Armin whined and starfished her hand over his face. “Shut uuuup.” 

“The sexy kind of cute.”

“Mm-hm?” 

“Mm-hm.” 

“You’re still hard.” 

“As a rock.” Levi rubbed his cock against her hip, only now noticing they had her cum squished between them. 

Armin moved her head to look down at his cock, and she reached down to grasp him as well. She pulled back his foreskin and rubbed her thumb over the head, spreading around the sticky drops leaking from the tip. Whereas Eren’s cock was kind of pointy, thinner near the head and thicker near the base, and Armin’s was uniformly thick through most of the shaft, Levi’s bulged out a little below the head and was narrower, though still thick, near the base. 

“You’re staring.”

Armin shrugged with the shoulder that wasn’t pressed into the bed. “Comparing.”

“Comparing? Comparing me to you?”

“And Eren. He’s sort of thinner near the head, and you’re thicker.”

“Ahh, yes. Eren Jager’s pointy penis.” 

Armin snorted. “Do you not like it?”

“Huh? Oh. No, I like it plenty.”

“It’s like, an arrow of love.”

“Love arrow, shoot,” Levi mumbled. 

“Where have I heard that before?” 

“Nowhere,” Levi growled. 

“Mm-hm.” Armin guessed anime. Armin was right, though Armin had never seen that particular anime. Armin squeezed Levi’s cock. “Shall I make this love arrow shoot?” 

Levi groaned. “I regret saying anything.” 

Armin laughed. She squeezed again and pulled up, sliding the skin over the head until she could slip her thumb in and stroke the inside. Someone else might have covered their face, but Levi didn’t; he threw his head back and let his mouth fall open. 

“Ah, aah!”

“Good?”

“Fuck!”

“Is it good?”

“ _Armin_!” 

“Levi. Is it good?”

“Yes!” Levi let his instincts take over, and he fucked into Armin’s hand while he brought their mouths together. “Mmh!” 

“Mm?”

“Mm! Mm…” 

“Mm.” 

They communicated something in hums alone, and then Armin moved down Levi’s body pushing him onto his back. She smiled at him and then leaned down, took the head of his cock in her mouth once more. 

“Mmm…” Armin hummed, because he actually tasted _good_. Well, he tasted like dick, certainly, which was a neutral flavour at best, but also, he tasted good. 

Levi threw his arms out to the side, and his knuckles hit something hard -- his phone, he realised, and he picked it up and opened the camera. “Fuck.” He looked down at Armin, her ass raised in the air, the entirety of her nether region visible in the mirror behind her, her mouth stretched around his cock. “Smile.”

Armin looked up at him and saw the phone pointed towards her. She blushed, but continued doing what she was doing. Levi’s fingers went into her hair, pushing it out of her face, and she took him in as far as she could. There was maybe an inch left to the base, but she wasn’t going to try choking him down. Not today. Instead, she played with his balls, the tips of her fingers rubbing them and tickling underneath. She sucked and rolled her tongue, then pulled back to swirl her tongue around the head before grasping the base and fucking her mouth on his cock. 

Levi watched her beside the screen, gently scritching her head. “Fuck. That’s -- Ah! That’s so good.” He wasn’t exaggerating. Armin was actually really good at sucking cock; he was impressed. “So, so, hah…” He stopped trying to make words happen and just whined. 

Armin didn’t really understand it, but she really like having things in her mouth. Fingers, dicks, pens -- she was always chewing on pens. Levi’s cock was much more enjoyable than a pen though, especially when it came with Levi whining like he was going to cry or scream or both. 

“Armin. Armin I’m going to come.”

Armin pulled off just long enough to say “In my mouth,” before she sucked him down again. 

“Fuck!” Levi whined again, and again, and again, short and high and sounding nothing like himself, and he screamed while Armin held him down and felt his hot cum fill her mouth. 

“Mm.” Armin pulled back and waited for Levi to catch his breath. He was still holding his phone up, still recording her. Once Levi looked at her again, Armin smiled at him, and she lifted her chin so he could see her swallow. 

“Fuck.” Levi ended the video and locked his phone, tossing it aside. He dragged Armin crawling up the bed and kissed her. He could taste his cum in her mouth, even after she swallowed, and his cock throbbed, trying and failing to get it up again. “I wish I’d recorded while you were coming.”

“We could do it again.”

“In a little bit. I need like… I don’t know. Fuck, I’m old, I don’t know how long until I can go a second round.”

“You’re not that old. And that’s fine, I’m not really ready either.” Armin rolled over and lay down next to Levi, entwining their fingers. “Was I good?”

“You were fantastic.” Levi was too horny to bother toning down his compliments. “I mean it. You know I mean it, I don’t just say this shit. That was one of the best blowjobs I’ve ever had in my life.” 

Armin blushed, as if her face could get redder. “I just did what I felt like doing.”

“I’ll tell you, from an ex-whore, that’s the secret. There’s no one-size fits all blowjob and the best ones are ninety percent _what would happen if I did this?_ ”

“Oh.” Armin eyed the cum all over Levi’s front, some of it dry and some still sticky. “Should we clean up?” 

Levi shrugged. “If we’re gonna fuck again, no point.” 

“But, you… Don’t you like being clean?”

“Yeah.” Levi kissed her cheek. “But sex is supposed to be messy. I don’t mind it. I actually like feeling gross if it’s this kind of gross.” 

“Okay.” Armin yawned. 

Levi also yawned. “Nap?”

“Mm-hm.” 

Levi moved to shut the light and get the both of them under the messed-up blankets, then pulled Armin close. “Do you mind sleeping like this?”

Armin shook her head. “I like it. I actually…” She looked down at the cum she could see splattered on Levi’s shoulder. It was still wet, so probably his. “I kind of like being this messy too.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter title is a love live reference.


	50. The Fuckening 2: Return of the Lube

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Rivarmin fucking. Enjoy, if you like. Gets a little sentimental.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the warns: more gratuitous fucking, including a sex act i have never seen in fic (and you probably haven’t either), body image, implied body dysphoria (and euphoria)

Levi woke at four in the morning. Far from a nap, he and Armin had actually completely fallen asleep. Not that it was surprising; they fucked pretty late in the first place. 

Levi planned to just let Armin sleep, but his breathing must have woken her, because her eyes fluttered open. “Hey,” Armin said, her voice a little raspy. “Mm. Thirsty. ‘n’ my ass feels weird.” 

Levi groped on his nightstand for the bottle of water he knew was there and handed it to her. “Good weird or bad weird?”

“Good. Really good.” Armin yawned, then drank from the bottle. “Ready for another round?” 

Levi was surprised Armin asked, since they couldn’t have slept more than a few hours and she must still be tired, but he couldn’t deny that his dick was definitely perking up. “If you’re up for it.” 

“Mm-hmm. Wanna fuck me this time?” Armin looked hesitant. 

“You mean. Like. Dick in ass? You sure?”

Armin nodded; she still seemed a little apprehensive, but also certain of her decision. “I wanna try it with you, at least.” 

“Alright then.” Levi reached out for her, but Armin backed away. 

“Ah, wait, I should. Um.” Armin stuttered and started to get out of bed. “I’ll be right back.” 

Levi watched her walk a little awkwardly towards the door in the dark, and then slip across the hall to the bathroom. 

Ah. Of course. 

Levi turned to his nightstand once more, this time for his phone, before realising it wasn’t there; he turned on the light and, while the lamp heated up, felt around the blankets for it before finding it near the foot of the bed. He unlocked it, going to the photo app, and hit the last one -- his video of Armin sucking him. 

He turned up the volume until he could hear not only the surprisingly (not to him, not anymore, not since years ago) high-pitched moans that came intermittently from his own mouth, but also the smacking of Armin’s lips and her uneven breaths. 

He only got through about a minute of it, but felt the stirrings of arousal in his lower regions. He didn’t want to get too turned on yet, because he kind of had to use the bathroom too, but he also wanted to see his masterpiece. 

Armin came in while he was watching; Levi paused it. 

“Weirdest shit of your life?” Levi asked casually. 

Armin covered her face. “Shut the fuck up, oh my god!”

Levi got up. “Hey, I know the feeling pretty well.” 

Armin dropped her hands and smiled at him. “You loser.” 

Levi observed Armin for a moment, standing in the middle of his bedroom, naked but for her socks which had at some point slipped down to her ankles. He held up his phone and snapped a photo. 

Armin blinked. “What?”

“You look sexy.” Levi shrugged. “Should I delete it?”

“N-no. It’s fine. Um. You really took a video last night?” 

“Mm-hmm.” Levi left his phone on the bed, unlocked, as he left for the bathroom. “Watch it if you want.” 

As soon as Levi left, Armin dove for the phone. 

She opened the most recent photo first. She didn’t see what was so special about it; she was just standing there. Armin noticed some shadows on her chest that didn’t make sense; she looked down at herself and realised they were bruises, kind of finger-shaped. She blushed; she must have missed them in the bathroom mirror, too focussed on the big hickeys on her neck and shoulder. 

Armin swiped to the right, and hit play on the video. Instantly she saw herself, smiling around Levi’s cock, and it was enormously embarrassing but she kept watching, for some reason. Levi’s hand came into frame, pushing back her hair, and then she saw it. She saw what Levi was talking about. _Sunshine_. Armin’s eyes shone with her enjoyment, her skin glowed, and god, she looked beautiful. She felt beautiful. 

Armin rolled over onto her stomach and smacked the phone down on the bed. She buried her face in a pillow, smiling wide. She didn’t hear Levi come in, didn’t even notice him until his hand rubbed her soft backside. She laughed, and turned her head towards him. The video was still playing, but all she got was sound. “You were right.”

“Hm?”

“Seeing that I. I saw what you meant. About me being, um, beautiful, or hot, or whatever.”

“Good.”

“Can you take one while you’re fucking me?” Armin wanted to see it again, see if it was more obvious when she was the one in pleasure. 

“I can do better than that.” Levi held up a glasses case, which he had brought from a drawer under the coffee table in the front room. “Google Glass.”

“Oh my god.” Armin thought she shouldn’t be surprised Levi had them, what with his expendable income, but she was anyway. 

Levi took the glasses out and put them on. “It’ll go right to my phone. I had Hanji set it up. I don’t fucking know how to use any of this shit, but apparently I had to void my warranty to make it work so I want to get some use out of it.” 

Armin laughed. She had personally watched Mikasa jailbreak a few iPhones; she knew how it went. “Okay. Okay, let’s do this.” 

Levi fiddled around with the controls of his glasses and the “ZoeGlass” app on his phone, and made sure it was recording. “How do you want to do this?” 

Armin spread her legs. “Fingers first. I really, um. Really like that part, so.” 

“Yeah, of course. I also found these.” He held up a box of latex gloves, not his preferred ones but they would do. “Thought I was out.” He tore open the box and removed one, and as he struggled to get it on a hand that was still slightly damp from the bathroom sink, he asked Armin, “How did you like last night?” 

Armin grinned. “I think you know.” 

“Tell me. For the video.” 

“I enjoyed it. _Really_ enjoyed it.” 

“Mhm. Tell me about it. What did you enjoy?”

Armin rolled her eyes. “I enjoyed you not wearing any underwear ‘cause yours tore. I enjoyed you sucking on my neck in front of your naked paintings.” 

“Did you now.” Levi lubed up his latex-covered fingers. 

Armin spread her legs a little more and waited for the press of Levi’s fingers against her hole. “Mm. I liked sucking on you with your back against the door. Liked how your cock filled my mouth.” She was blushing hard as she said this, but she took it as a challenge to see if she could make Levi squirm. 

One of Levi’s fingers went inside. Just one, despite that she usually started with two and was still a little loose from the night before. Tease. 

“I liked you stroking me through my underwear. I liked you getting on top of me and rubbing your cock against me.” 

“Hmm.” Levi got that first finger all the way in with ease. 

“Felt even better when I pulled down my undies. _AH!_ ” Armin’s hips jerked up when Levi curled his finger up, getting the right spot on his first try. Of course he did. “I like _that_!”

“Good.” Levi took the finger out and pushed two in, slower. 

“Oh wow.” Armin breathed in deep. “I. I liked you fingering me. Even when it hurt a little, I really liked it. I liked how you were so gentle -- and I liked when you realised I can fucking take it and got rough.” 

Levi pushed two fingers all the way in and knew he’d jerk it to Armin’s moan for years to come. ( _Years_. Oh fuck, his stomach flipped at the prospect of possible _years_. Not now, responsible adult brain.)

“F-fuck. Like that.” Armin reached for her cock, not really stroking it, just holding on, moving her thumb every once in a while while Levi’s fingers did their wonderful work on her insides. 

“Anything else?” 

Armin groaned, frustrated, and decided to go for a new tactic. Levi’s greatest weakness (she hoped): _Emotions_. “I liked how you looked at me like you adored me.” Levi’s hand stopped for a moment, then continued finger-fucking her, now a little harder. “I liked looking at you the same way. I liked, oh fuck, fuck!” She grabbed her cock, hard, to keep herself from coming. “I liked, hmmnnn, I liked when you kissed me like you needed me to survive.”

Truth be told, Levi was definitely getting turned on not just from touching Armin, but also listening to her talk dirty. That was common enough for him. And now, on top of that, he also was getting little flutters in his chest -- that was a little less common. A little more difficult to just hide, when his arousal lowered his inhibitions so much. He put in a third finger with a little more lube, trying to push down the feelings, and wondered if he could get four in like Armin said she’d done. His fingers were thicker than hers, so maybe not, but he wasn’t sure his cock would fit otherwise. 

Armin saw the heat in his eyes, then, and the adoration returning, and she knew she succeeded. She _had him_. “And, fuck, I liked your tongue in my mouth, I liked you biting me, I liked you grabbing my, m-my-my tits...” Armin’s face exploded in heat at that. Oh god, if only. “I liked sucking you again, having you on your back, you screaming for me. I liked you filming me. I liked swallowing and kissing you after. I liked sleeping next to you while we were all gross and covered in cum. I think, I think it’s still there.”

Levi reached out and touched her chest, an unbruised area, rubbed it a little, and it had that weird crusty texture of dry cum. “It’s still there, I can feel it.” 

“G-good.” 

“Anything else you liked?”

“Fuck. I. I like _you_ , you asshole. Fuck me already.” 

“Don’t think I need to put a fourth in?” 

“N-no. I think it’s fine.” 

“You sure?” 

Armin nodded. “I’m usually kind of loose around Eren with three and your hands are bigger. It’ll be good. If not, well, you can always try again.” 

Levi nodded. He stripped off the glove and tossed it in the trash. It was followed by a condom wrapper, condom still inside because he’d torn it in his haste to get the thing open. Another followed, this time sans its contents, as he rolled the condom on and slicked it up. Briefly, Levi felt like a loser; he hadn’t torn one in nearly a decade. 

“Can we? Do it? The other way?” Armin asked, hesitant. “With me on top of you.” 

“Yeah. If you want.” Levi and Armin shuffled around, switching places, and Armin straddled Levi’s hips. Levi put his hands on her thighs and rubbed up and down; she was shaking, and he tried to soothe her. “We don’t have to do this.” 

“I want to. I do.” Armin shivered. “I’m just a little scared. I don’t know… why. I’ve done this before, I don’t know. But I want to try it. So.” Armin reached behind herself and grasped Levi’s cock, keeping it steady while she sank down onto him, oh so slowly. 

“ _Shit_ ,” they both said at the same time. 

“Oh god,” Levi said, when he felt the head go in. He watched his cock disappear inside her. 

“Oh god,” Armin said, when her butt hit his hips and she realised he was all the way in. 

“This is…” Levi bit his lip, not wanting to be the one to say it first. 

“Weird.” Armin said it. 

“Yeah. Fuck. I mean, it’s great, but it’s. Weird.” 

“Yeah, um, I’m gonna.” Armin picked herself up and let Levi’s cock slide out of her. She got rid of the condom and scooted down a little. “Let’s do this.” She pressed their cocks together and circled her hands around both of them. 

“Yeah.” 

Armin rolled her hips forward; Levi bucked up to meet her. There was a little slapping noise and their thighs smacked together, and Armin threw her head back, eyes turned up to the ceiling, while Levi watched the head of Armin’s cock peen through the circle of her hands and then disappear, and his own do the same, not escaping quite as far. The intimate slide of shaft against shaft wasn’t something he experienced often -- more likely, some sort of penetration, with Levi at either end. Maybe the unfamiliarity, or more probably his attachment to his partner, made all his senses turn their attention to Armin and the feel of her body against his, and heightened his response. 

It was the same for Armin, though she was a little more attentive, for some reason, to the feeling of her balls rubbing and rocking against Levi’s. His were somewhat over-large, as if what his cock lacked in length just transferred a little farther back, and it was like a nice little cushion when she ground down against him. 

Levi’s breaths were coming faster, his moans higher pitched, and Armin could tell he was close to coming again. Closer than Armin was, and she didn’t think that was very fair. 

“Levi, Levi,” Armin called. “Finger me again?” 

“F-fuck,” was Levi’s response. He sat up a little and reached for the box of gloves, snapping one on. He reached behind Armin and pushed one finger inside her, then two, using the lube that was already there to ease the intrusion. It was more than enough; he’d used plenty before. Armin gasped and rocked back to take him in deeper. 

“Mmn, yeah. That’s good.” 

Levi evidently didn’t think it was good enough though; he removed his fingers and then tugged at her legs, carefully rearranging her while also losing himself to lust. Levi’s hand snaked under her thigh and she felt Levi’s fingers push back into her, deeper, curling, searching for her prostate, finding it -- “Aah, fuck. There.” Armin could feel her orgasm approaching, finally, maybe just as fast as Levi’s. “You gonna come?” 

“Mm-hmm.” Levi rolled his hips, mostly ineffectively, a hundred percent instinctively. 

“We’re both gonna come on you,” Armin pointed out, murmuring into Levi’s ear. 

Levi whined. “Yes!” he hissed. “Come on me.” 

_He’s so…_ Armin began to think, but she didn’t finish her thought. 

Levi finished it for her. _Slutty_. “Fuck, I must sound like such a cum slut.” He gasped. “Good thing… good thing I am.” 

Armin took her hands off their cocks; she leaned forward and braced herself against the bed, arms locked by Levi’s shoulders. Every time she rolled her hips toward him it felt like they were crashing together, and it almost hurt, but mostly it felt incredible. “I’m… close.”

“Me too. God, you’re gorgeous.” 

“You too.” If Armin wasn’t already so pink in the face she would have blushed. As it was, she had very little left in the way of inhibitions and there wasn’t all that much Levi could say at this particular time that would embarrass her. 

“Even with my, _ah!_ My fucking Google glasses.” 

Armin didn’t answer him, and Levi didn’t notice, because they both lost their last tenuous hold on intelligible speech as their climaxes approached. Levi’s broken yell would have drowned her out anyway -- he spilled all over his chest, and Armin did the same only moments later. 

They stayed in the same position, breathing hard, until Levi’s hand started to cramp. When he moved, Armin plucked the glasses off his face and put them on herself. She looked up and down Levi’s body, making sure to get every inch of his cum-covered chest in high definition video. 

Levi’s chest rose and fell, his head lolling back on the pillow now that he was no longer responsible for the camera. Armin reached for his neck, gently placing her palm on the side. “You look really good, covered in cum.” 

Levi couldn’t help it -- he grinned. “I fucking, love, hearing that.” He reached for his phone with a shaky hand and stopped the recording, deciding he would watch it later, probably with both Armin and Eren, because Eren really fucking needed to see it too. He took his glasses back, turned them off, and returned them to their case while Armin just watched him with an incredibly satisfied look on her face: a wide smile, half-lidded eyes, a slowly-fading blush across her cheeks and nose. Armin’s hair, especially her bangs, stuck to her face with sweat. 

“I feel gross,” Levi said. “But I’m way too tired for a shower.” 

“Sleep?” Armin suggested. “We’ll shower first thing in the morning.” 

Levi neglected to point out that it was already, technically, morning. The sun wasn’t up yet, so he could pretend. “Fuck yes.” Levi slipped his arms over Armin’s shoulders and tugged her down, embracing her, kissing her, rolling the both of them on their sides. He ignored the stickiness between them and the awkward moisture of sweaty skin against sweaty skin, in favour of pulling Armin close. 

“Light’s on,” Armin mumbled. 

Levi pulled the blanket over their heads, throwing them into the dark. “Not anymore.” 

\---

Levi woke first. Again. 

He could just barely make out Armin’s features in the dim light coming through the blankets; she looked peaceful, angelic even when not appropriately backlit. Angelic even with hair sticking to her face, one of her full cheeks squished against a pillow. Angelic even when he knew there was dried cum all over her front, dried lube in her ass. Levi, a long-time appreciator of blasphemy, found this angel quite appealing. 

He didn’t want to wake her yet, so he lifted the blanket as gently as possible and folded it down on his side. He reached for his phone, and noticed he’d left the bedside lamp on; he shut the light, and unlocked his phone. 

The video from last night was saved, with a very nice preview thumbnail. 

Levi noticed the time. It was only nine in the morning. He was sure, with the energy they’d expended last night, he and Armin would sleep well into the day. 

He remembered, very belatedly, that the downstairs neighbours were out this weekend; he wasn’t sure why, but they wouldn’t have heard him fucking last night and wouldn’t bother him today. Thank god. 

He looked over at Armin. He felt an urge to share this particular moment. 

He texted Eren. 

_Do you have snapchat?_

He added Eren as soon as he got his username, and immediately sent him a photo of himself and Armin, fast asleep beside him. After reassuring Eren that there was no significant nudity in the photo, he waited for the notification that Eren had seen it -- and screenshotted it. Of course. 

_well aren’t you two adorable_ , Eren texted back to him. 

_Shut your fucking mouth,_ Levi said, awkwardly line-broken by accident after ‘fuck’. He had the tiniest of smiles on his face though. If he was with Armin… yeah, he could accept being adorable. 

Eren sent a little pink heart with gold sparkles. Levi was baffled by this creation, but also, kind of felt like there was this warmth coming from within him. 

_Idk how to send hearts but love you too._ God, he felt like such a fucking _sap_. 

_good sex?_ Eren asked. 

Levi rolled over; he switched back to Snapchat and sent a photo of the trash can, in which were two latex gloves and three condoms. He would have like to send a photo or video from last night, but Snapchat didn’t take uploads as far as he knew, and also, Eren was at work. 

Armin apparently noticed him moving, because she stirred and rubbed at her eyes. “Levi? Mornin’.” 

“Morning,” Levi repeated back, and he smooched her on the cheek. When he pulled away, Armin was smiling up at him. His phone buzzed with another text. 

_3? congradulations._

Levi didn’t notice the typo. 

“Who ya texting?” Armin asked. 

“Eren.” Levi stared down at the phone, feeling that warmth again. 

“Mmf. Gimme,” Armin said, making a grabby motion with her hand. Levi handed over the phone, and Armin immediately typed something in and sent it. “Hehe.” 

“What’d you send?”

She showed him the phone; her message was just a bunch of slashes. 

“What’s that mean?” 

“It’s a blush. Because you’re blushing.”

“I am not. I don’t blush.” 

“Oooookaaaaay….” 

Eren asked what the slashes meant, apparently not knowing either, and Levi told him to shut up. 

_come home soon_ , Levi said, feeling once more like a fucking sap, but he missed Eren. He missed having the three of them together. He’d gotten used to it. 

Then again, he could get used to Armin…

“Hey,” Armin called. “Let’s send him a video.”

“What, a sexy video? He’s at work.”

Armin shook her head. “No, like, an I-love-you video.” She pondered this for a moment. “We could sing him something?” 

“I can’t sing.” 

“Doesn’t matter. Do you know ‘You Are My Sunshine’?” 

“Of course I fucking do.” Okay, so he and his little secret anime nerd ass knew ‘You Are My Senpai’ better. No-one needed to know that about him though. 

“Okay. But, instead of, ‘my only sunshine,’ maybe we could sing, ‘my other sunshine,’ since there’s three of us?”

“I like that.” So the second line was still ‘my only’ in the original. Good to know. Levi opened Snapchat again. “Okay, let’s do this. One, two, three.” He held down the shutter button and recorded them for a few seconds; the video cut off before they could finish the chorus, before they could get to the ‘I love you’, but they both knew it would get the message across. 

“Wow…” Armin said. “I’m sorry, but you are really bad.” 

“I know. I told you. Should I still send it?” 

“Mm-hm. He’ll like it.” 

Levi sent it. 

_love you too_ , Eren replied via text message. _both of you_. With another one of those sparkly hearts. 

Levi smiled, caught off guard, and he flipped over and dove face-first into the pillow.

“Feeling like slashes?” Armin asked. 

“Shut up,” was Levi’s confirmation. He lifted his head after a minute and turned to Armin. “Hey. I have an idea.”

“Idea?” 

“Not for Eren, just us, unless you want to show him later. A sexy idea. Well, maybe.” 

“Maybe?”

“Dunno if you’ll like it. It’s not a common thing.” 

“What is it?” Armin was honestly curious -- everything she’d done so far with Levi, even the brief moment of incredibly awkward penetration, felt amazing. She wondered what sort of superior secret he was about to unload on her. 

“It’s kind of hard to describe. Uh…” Levi searched for the words. “There’s this, kind of, space? Behind your balls? And sometimes, you can fit a finger in there.” 

“Oh.” Armin thought about it. “That’s kind of…” 

“It’s apparently a thing a lot of trans girls do? I don’t know for sure, I just, someone I slept with in college showed me.” 

“I. I can imagine that would make sense.” Armin fidgeted. “It’s… kind of like, simulating a vagina? Isn’t it?” 

“Guess so.” 

She sighed. “I don’t really have any particular, you know, dislike for my whole, genital… area, what I have, nor do I really want a vagina. But, I mean, it’s not really… I don’t have a preference.” Mostly, vaginas were unfamiliar territory for Armin. “So I dunno. I’m kind of curious though. Why would that space even be there?”

“Well, it’s apparently where your testicles are before they drop.” 

“Ah.” She looked towards the foot of the bed; the blanket covered Armin’s body, but Levi could tell she was looking towards her dick, contemplating trying it. “Yeah. Yeah, show me.” 

Levi kissed her cheek and folded back the blankets. “It’s probably best if you’re relaxed, especially the first time. Let me know if it hurts at all.”

Armin spread her legs and Levi settled between them; he lifted her soft cock out of the way and gently pressed his fingers to the side of her balls, pushing the left aside and feeling around behind it. 

“That already feels weird,” Armin said. Sure, there was the nice tingle that accompanied any touching between her legs, but this was different. Yes, Levi was trying to get her off, but she didn’t know yet if it would work. 

“Should I stop?”

“Mm-mm, keep going. I’m really curious what this is like.” 

“There _are_ a lot of nerves there,” Levi said. “It’s going to feel like something, so just. Expect that.” He found a little dip in the flesh. “Think that’s it.”

“Can I feel?” 

Levi took her hand and brought it down between her legs. “Right… there. You feel a little, sort of, dent?”

“Yeah. Wow. You’re going to finger that? It seems small.” 

“It is. I’m just going to use my pinky. You ready?” 

“Mm-hm.” Armin brought her hand back up to her chest to rest on top of the other. 

Levi curled most of his fingers into a fist, leaving only his little finger out. He pushed against the place where he’d found that dip, and with a little pressure his finger started to sink in, pulling skin with it. 

“Hooo,” Armin exhaled. “That feels. Well. I feel that.” Levi looked at her, and her eyes were wide. Armin’s hands were now clasped tight over one another. 

“Keep going?” 

“Yeah.” 

Levi pushed a little more, until he had his pinky in to the second knuckle. He noticed Armin was starting to get hard. “You like it?” 

Armin was starting to blush, too. “I. Hmm. Is this what a vagina feels like?” she wondered aloud. 

“I, uh, I wouldn’t know,” Levi said. He wiggled his finger a little, and Armin gasped. “I used to know someone who transitioned after being a drag queen for years, she had to do this a lot before tucking her dick, and she said it was kind of similar.” 

“Wow.” Armin took a deep breath, a little shaky. “I actually really like that.”

Levi felt proud of himself. 

“Can you, like, move? You know, in and out. Or is that not how it works?” 

“I can, but not too hard. It’s really tight right now, so I could end up hurting you if I do it too much. You can apparently stretch it over time, though, slowly, and then… Well, I don’t know how much it stretches, to be honest. I literally only ever did this for tucking, I’ve never had anyone fuck it.” Levi pulled his finger most of the way out, and then pushed it back in, not too fast; Armin seemed to like it, by the way she gasped. 

“That’s a super weird feeling but I really like it,” she said in a rush. “I kind of, oh god --” she hissed as Levi pushed his finger in again. “I kind of don’t know if I want to come from that just yet.” 

“Should I stop?” Levi asked. 

“Y-yeah. Yeah, stop.” 

Levi withdrew his finger and rubbed in the middle of her balls to make sure they went back to the right place, then crawled back over her to kiss her gently. “You good?”

“Yeah. Thanks for, um, showing me that.” 

“No problem. So, shower?”

“God, yeah.” 

In the shower, Levi offered to wash Armin’s hair, and she complied, which turned out to be a very good decision as Levi gave her a scalp massage that she swore could have put her to sleep if she’d been sitting down. She then let him wash the rest of her body; he worked slowly, carefully, and somehow it ended up being kind of… erotic. 

“Are you trying to turn me on again?” Armin asked. 

“Is it working?” Levi teased, deadpan, scrubbing her chest with a loofah at the same time as his left hand rubbed circles against her ribs. 

“Is this some kind of kink?” Armin asked. “You’re really meticulous.” 

“I mean, I do just like cleanliness --”

“I know.”

“-- but it might also be a little bit of a kink. Washing someone else.” Levi kissed her. “Eren’s not patient enough for it. Good to know someone appreciates it.” 

Armin kissed him back. “It’s nice. Feels better when you do it, somehow.” 

They ended up making out a little in the shower, and then Levi finished up washing Armin and himself, and then a little more kissing before they got out. 

Armin looked at her reflection in the mirror as its fog cleared. “Ah… I think that’s the last of it,” she said, inspecting her hair. Sure enough, Levi’s thorough shampooing had washed out the last tinge of orange hair dye, leaving Armin’s hair platinum-blonde with its natural straw yellow at the roots. 

“Gonna do it again?” Levi asked. 

“Nah,” Armin said. “I think I’ll just dye it back to my natural, with the permanent stuff. It was fun being orange for a while, but I like my own hair too.”

“You can say that again,” Levi mumbled. His skin was still suffering the last tint of fake tan, and his hair was little more than stubble. 

Armin kissed his cheek. 

“What’s that for?” Levi asked. 

Armin was smiling, staring at him. “‘Cause I --” Armin seemed to realise something; she looked away, blushing from more than just the shower’s heat. “I dunno. You’re cute.” 

Levi felt heat rise in his cheeks as well, and he also looked away. “Yeah… you too.” 

\---

Later, while Armin was studying, Levi downloaded the videos from cloud to computer. He watched them with headphones in, not to get off but just to… to _think_. 

He didn’t have any particular goals in thinking. 

But he thought. A lot. Probably more than Levi usually thought about things. He thought about Armin, and about Eren, and about himself. 

He thought about what he wanted out of this relationship; he thought about what he never asked for but was somehow, luckily, miraculously getting anyway. 

He thought about Armin, sitting at the kitchen counter, humming as she read a textbook. About Eren, walking home from work. About how the two of them called his apartment home, if only temporarily. 

He thought about boathouses, about sunsets, about late night phone calls, about falling in love. 

He thought about couch cuddles, about musicals, about bubblegum toothpaste, about… 

He thought about _years to come_. 

The second video ended; he’d barely paid attention. Which was saying a lot, as both videos were definitely very sexy; Levi had been just that lost in his thoughts. 

Levi heard the front door to his apartment open, and Armin’s muffled happy squeal a few moments later. The corners of his mouth turned up. 

_“What’s that for?” Levi asked._

_Armin was smiling, staring at him. “‘Cause I --”_

Levi sighed. “Me too,” he mumbled to himself. 

Eren would be happy. And Armin would -- Armin would --

_“‘Cause I --”_

Armin cut herself off for his sake, didn’t she? She cut herself off because Levi was terrible with anything resembling _feelings_ , and beyond that, she knew he would run if they didn’t both feel the same. 

Or… She cut herself off from saying what she felt, because she felt it in the first place. Because she didn’t want to lose him. Armin cut him off for her own sake. 

Levi shifted so he was laying down, on his side. He closed his laptop, held its slight warmth to his chest while the fan gradually slowed its whirring. He thought about Armin. 

_“‘Cause I --”_

“Me fucking too.” 

“Levi, Eren’s home!” Armin called from the front room. She knew Levi was moping or, worse, _thinking_ , and if Armin was right, and Armin was very often right about things, she knew exactly what he was thinking about. It wasn’t one of those things that needed overthinking -- not the sort of circular, spiralling thoughts that Levi often followed into panic. 

Not that she was innocent of overthinking it. Armin took _fourteen years_ to think through how she felt for Eren, and she had several stages of denial when it came to Levi; Armin hadn’t even wanted to admit she was attracted to him at all, once upon a time, long before she felt anything outside of the physical. 

But there always comes a point at which the only thoughts left are to fight the truth. That went for any emotion, but especially --

Levi emerged from his bedroom. The dark circles under his eyes looked especially pronounced, but his step was light. He shut the door and looked up, between Eren and Armin to the blank canvas propped against the wall next to the door, and then to each of their faces. 

He was smiling before he even had a chance to try and bury it. Armin wore a matching one; Eren looked between the two of them, clearly befuddled, his smile dropping for a moment before he _understood_. Eren put his arm around Armin’s shoulders and Levi crossed the room to fit himself into the open space. 

Armin rested her head in the crook of Levi’s neck; Eren kissed each of them on the temple. 

_“‘Cause I --”_

Sometimes these things didn’t need saying. The _look_ they shared was enough to know. But Levi felt, because his _thing_ \-- his _relationship_ with Armin had started with the two of them just talking, that he had to say something. 

“Me too,” he whispered. 

It was enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is not affiliated with or endorsed by google or any other brand, company, or whatever copyrighted material is referenced in this fic, i just seriously wondered why no one ever wrote cam smut with google glass. it seems obvious. 
> 
> what levi did to armin in that last sexy scene is one of several sex acts known by the name muffing. look it up, consider adding it to your own fics, do it to yourself (carefully) if you wanna, idk have fun yall


	51. I Couldn’t Come Up With A Relevant Title I Liked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Food, feudalism, and well-intentioned Bibles. The author is not a historian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: non-explicit smut. brief discussions of suicide/self-harm. also drug mentions.

Eren was fine for all of ten seconds. The he stopped breathing. 

He was seated on Levi’s sofa, with Armin on his left and Levi on his right. Levi’s laptop was in his lap, and Armin had her face half hidden behind Eren’s shoulder, and was peeking through her fingers at the screen. 

On the laptop screen was the first video from the night before, of Armin giving head, and while Armin herself couldn’t decide if she was embarrassed or elated, and Levi walked the line between calmly appreciative and rock-hard, Eren just fucking forgot to breathe. 

That didn’t last long -- Eren wasn’t very good at holding his breath after all -- and he gasped for air, suddenly feeling his dick pressing against the warm underside of the laptop. 

“You look gorgeous,” Eren mumbled. “You always do, but…” Okay, Eren was very aware that what he was about to say would be cliche as hell but he said it anyway. “You’re glowing.” 

Armin squeaked and fully wedged her face between Eren’s shoulder and the couch. 

“Isn’t she?” Levi drawled. He looked over to Armin (not that she could see him) and compared what little he could see of her pink cheeks to the completely red-faced Armin on the screen. “Blushing suits you.” 

Armin whined. Through the recording, Levi also whined, but less embarrassed and more sexy. Following this, Eren whined, in a sort of sexual desperation. 

Levi refused to offer Eren any relief; when he saw Eren’s hand move, trying to snake under the laptop, he pinned it down to the sofa. Armin came out of hiding and grabbed Eren’s other hand; she was still blushing for all the same reasons, but Armin was also sort of strengthened by the very clear hypnotising spell the video of her had obviously placed on Eren. 

They made Eren sit through both videos (and the second one was rather long, as a consequence of extensive teasing and fingering and various changes in position and intention and also the fact that Armin and Levi had already come once each, even if it was a few hours earlier), with Eren squirming in his seat and so obviously turned on even if they couldn’t see his lap. 

And then, when it was over, Levi closed his laptop and put it on the table, and both he and Armin got up and went to get their coats. “Where do you want to go for dinner?” Levi asked, nonchalantly, and Armin suggested a few places she liked, for once not arguing when Levi offered to pay. 

“Um?” Eren squeaked out. “Are we getting dinner _now_?” 

“Well, yeah,” Armin said. “Why?”

Eren gestured at his crotch. “I’ve got a bit of a situation here.” 

Levi shrugged. “So go take care of it. We’ll wait for you.” _Not like you’ll take long anyway_ , Levi couldn’t help but think, though it felt too mean to say aloud. When he was already teasing Eren so thoroughly, more meanness was not necessary. 

Eren looked to Armin; Armin just smiled back at him. 

Fuck. They had _planned_ this. 

All that sweet hugging and sentimentality from earlier was gone -- they showed him their own homemade porn and then left him with a massive boner, balls as blue as those in the painting in the corner. Or maybe, the sentimentality _caused_ this. Now that Levi and Armin were, in their own way, on the same page about finally coming into the Land of the Four Letter L Word together, they were also in cahoots against Eren. 

Well fine. Three could play at that game. 

“I’ll be back,” Eren grumbled, and he waddled off to the bathroom, in order to jack off as loudly as he possibly could. 

\---

They made small talk over dinner at an Indian restaurant, straying away from heavy topics for once. Eren and Armin were edging into crunch time at the end of the semester, and that dominated much of the conversation. 

“I only have one real exam,” Armin said. “It’s during exam period, for European History. There’s also a paper though, due on the last day of class. I don’t really know _why_ there’s an exam _and_ a paper.” 

“I got a few of those, way back when,” Levi said. “It was the worst. I mean, you’re good at papers, I don’t know if you think it’s as bad as I did.” 

“It’s not the worst, really. I’ve got papers in African History and Presidents’ Letters, too, and I don’t mind any of them. It’s just weird to have both in one class. I guess I’d prefer just the paper over the test, but it’s not a big deal. The portfolio is what’s really gonna get me, though.” 

“I had the opposite issue,” Levi said. “Papers… I hated them. I always knew what to do with my art, but papers could take me a week just to _write,_ not to mention research. Tests were a pain, but I could get through them if there wasn’t a long-answer portion.” 

“I can’t do tests,” Eren said, shaking his head. “At all. Papers I can do, so long as I take really thorough notes while I research, but, you know. Memory, tests… I guess, with my accommodations, it’s a _little_ better, since I can do open-book tests. But I would really rather do papers.” 

“How do you feel about your portfolio, then?” Levi asked. 

“Kind of neutral, I guess.” Eren sighed. “Last semester I felt like I had this… huge improvement, you know? Like, it was super noticeable. And I was only taking one studio. The portfolio review was awesome. But now I’m in three, well, sort of four but Anatomy counts as a history and there’s no portfolio review for it, so three, and. I just don’t feel like I had the same, you know, leaps and bounds.”

“You have improved, though. At the beginning of the semester you were drawing thumbnails.”

“And I fixed that really fast, on your advice. Since then, it’s all been kind of the same stuff.” 

“In any case, your professors will have plenty to say. I have my criticisms for the art program here, but I do admit it’s hard not to improve, so you can expect that you did, even if you don’t see it. That, at least, is a strength most schools can’t boast.” Levi thought for a moment, with his thumb against his lips, teeth catching on skin cracked from a barrage of cleaning fluids. “It could be that, because you’re learning so much about how to critique your own work, you’re not noticing your own improvement, because you now know more possible things to do ‘wrong’, whatever ‘wrong’ means in context.

“It could be a lull, sure. People don’t just improve constantly. Either way, if your intellectual art skills improve faster than your concrete art skills, you’re probably not going to notice. But I could hold up something of yours from the first week of classes and something from this past week and I’m sure you’d notice the difference.”

“For what it’s worth, I think you’ve gotten better,” Armin said, forgetting that her opinion was always worth the world to Eren. “Your life drawing is more true to what people look like. And your illustrations are sort of… cleaner? No. Um. You use less lines to do what you did before, I think. So it sort of looks cleaner.”

“Oh,” Eren said. “I guess that makes sense.”

“And you have this way of making what you draw feel like it has a specific size. Usually really big. I don’t know how you do it.”

“You said that in class once. It happened more than that time?”

Armin nodded. “It’s happened a few times, more often now. Even some of the drawings I see you do that aren’t for any class look like that.”

“That’s really interesting,” Levi said. “I’ve had people say the opposite about my work; that despite how big it is it really does just look like close-ups of normal sized genitals. I don’t think I’ve seen your illustrations. Not in a while at least, and I’d like to.” 

Eren scratched the back of his neck. “Well, I can show you? Maybe on Monday, or something. They’re all in the studio. How about you?” he asked Armin. “I know you’ve gotten better.” 

Armin flushed a little. “I guess. I mean, I started out really bad. The only way to go was up.” 

“Even if that’s true, you really improved a lot,” Levi said. “More than most do in this amount of time.

“I’m nowhere near you guys’ level, though.” 

Eren and Levi looked at each other, then at Armin. “You just started,” Eren said. “I’ve been doing this since I was, what, two? Levi, how long have you been making art?” 

“Since I was six. And I’m thirty now.”

“See? And, when I was a kid, it was the same stick figures as any other kid.”

“Same here,” Levi said. “Maybe a little more grotesque for me, but still anatomically questionable stick figures.”

Eren nodded. “No-one’s naturally talented; we just worked for it, for years, and now we’re here.”

“Exactly. You made the kind of improvement, in three months, that I didn’t reach until I was nearly your age, when I’d been drawing for more than ten years. If there _is_ such a thing as natural talent, you’re more qualified to say you have it than we are.” 

“You, you don’t need to praise me like that…” Armin said. She couldn’t quite meet their eyes. 

“It’s not empty praise.” Levi tapped the table. “Look, I’ll critique your work personally if you want. I know you’ll have a million issues. I’ll be as scathing as I want, and trust me, I can get _mean_ when it comes to crits. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re leaps and bounds from where you began.” 

Armin couldn’t help but smile. “You’re both so… nice to me. Thank you.”

“It’s ‘cause we love you,” Eren said. 

Levi covered his mouth and made a little “hm” noise, not looking at anyone, which was his was of saying _yeah, me too._

“Thank you,” Armin repeated. 

“How about your other classes?” Levi asked. 

Armin shrugged. “Can’t complain. I like them. I mean, I’m a _little_ tired of hearing about feudalism, but otherwise it’s good.” 

“Feudalism is the one with the complicated monarchies and lots of destitute laborers, right?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Fuck feudalism.” 

Armin laughed. “There are so many similarities to what we have going on now, though, it’s kind of interesting.”

“Exactly,” Levi said. “ _Fuck feudalism_.” 

Armin laughed again. 

“I’m serious.” 

“I know you are. I agree with you.” 

“You like your other classes, right?” Eren asked.

“Mm-hm. I mean, everything in African History is new -- you know; they never taught any of it in high school. Certainly not anything pre-European imperialism, and that’s what this whole class is. And you know I love learning new things. I feel like I’m starting to get somewhere, moving towards the breadth of information I actually want to have; not nearly there, but definitely more than before. And Presidents’ Letters is helping; it’s not everything, but there’s a decent variety there. That’s, I think, what I’m most looking for right now. I’ll probably specialise somewhere later; that’s what most historians do. But I want to have a decent idea what my options are first, and I think I’ve picked good classes for that between this year and next semester.” 

“Don’t suppose you have any ideas about when and where you want to specialise yet?” Levi asked. 

“Not quite. I, well, this shouldn’t be a surprise; I’m always more interested in coastal areas. So it’ll probably end up being something like that, something oceanside.”

“Sure you don’t want to do marine biology?” Levi asked, with a bit of a smirk. 

Armin smiled. “I’ve thought about it more than I can say. But as much as I loved my parents, I’m not them. I care about their work, I love the ocean, but it’s not something I can do academically. It’s too emotional for me. Especially since…” Armin sighed. “I kind of love it the way the ancient Greeks loved their gods. I love the sea, while also fearing it. I know how it can destroy, because it already has destroyed something that was important to me. And knowing that power, and knowing all the life it brings alongside that destruction, I can’t help but love it. Even if it took my parents from me.

“History, though, my love for that is purely academic. It’s something I know I can enjoy for the rest of my life, without breaking down if it becomes too much.” 

It was at that point that the server came out with their appetizer tray, and conversation ceased, to be replaced with scarfing down food. 

The food was delicious, down to the last bite; after they finished and Levi paid (with permission, but also some protests), the trio left the restaurant feeling slightly sleepy in that way one is when one has eaten just slightly more than to fullness. 

“Aah, that was good,” Armin said, and she rubbed her belly. “Mmm.”

“A little spicier than I expected, but not bad,” was Levi’s appraisal. 

“Spicy?” Eren questioned. “Really?”

“Maybe I’m just not used to the flavours. It was a little surprising; the description didn’t sound like it would have as much spice in it as it did.” 

“I dunno, I just kind of expect that whenever we go there, my food will be more flavorful than I’m used to,” Armin said. “How about you, Eren?”

“Eh, I could’ve done spicier.” 

“Weren’t you just telling me a month ago that you were losing your spice tolerance from Wall’s bland food?” Armin joked. She clenched her hand tight around Eren’s and swung them in a wide arc between them, just for the hell of it. 

“Hey…” Eren pouted, but it didn’t last long with Armin goofing off beside him. “I’m not losing it so much that I don’t still enjoy it.” 

Levi watched the two from where he walked behind them. He let them lead the way, even though they were going to his house. Armin was doing most of the leading, being the better of the two at directions, and the pair joked and laughed while Levi stayed mostly silent unless they addressed him, which they did every once in a while. 

Levi was content with this. He liked being in the background every so often, just taking in pleasant things around him, like Armin’s laugh and Eren’s smile and their easy, familiar conversation. 

Eren keyed in the passcode for the street level door when Levi told him the numbers. Armin continued to lead the way up the stairs, and on the top floor landing Levi fished out his key. Rather than squeeze past the pair to open the door, he just handed the key to Armin. “Turn it left,” he directed. 

Neither of them knew there was any significance in it, and that was fine. 

Armin hung the keys on the hook by the door, under the label with the “L” on it. The other two hooks, marked “E” and “H”, were for Levi’s ex-roommates, who still had keys and dropped by when they felt like it. She had yet to meet Erwin, of course, aside from the painting in the front room, but she did remember Hanji. “You know, we never did meet up with Hanji again. I really would like to get to know a little more about their research.”

“I gave you their number, didn’t I?” Levi wondered aloud. 

“You did, I just never followed up.” Armin took off her jacket and hung it up in the closet by the door. “I’m gonna go take a shower, and maybe I’ll text Hanji tomorrow.” She took off her shoes and then headed towards the bathroom. 

“Thank you,” Eren said, out of the blue, as soon as Armin left the room. 

“Huh?” Levi didn’t know what he was being thanked for. 

“Thanks,” Eren repeated, “for what you said to Armin earlier. About her drawing. And about, you know, everything.” Eren fidgeted a bit. “Armin… she doesn’t really believe in herself. I’m sure you noticed. Sometimes she fakes like she’s more confident than she is, but most of the time it’s really obvious she doesn’t think nearly as much of herself as I know she’s worth. And I try my best to help her, and so does Mikasa. We have as long as we’ve known her. But we can only do so much. So it means a lot, to me, obviously, but probably even more to her, that you also think so well of her, and that you tell her.

“I know it’s not… easy for you. To give compliments. So thank you. I want you to know it’s not going unappreciated.” 

“You…” Levi took a moment to search for a word. “Doofus. You don’t need to thank me.” He reached up and ruffled Eren’s hair. “I’m only being honest. It’s the least I can do.” 

Eren smiled briefly, but then it fell into an expression somewhat more complicated, harder to describe, but the closest Levi could come up with was _regret_ , which didn’t make sense. “Most people don’t even do that much.” 

“Yes, well, you don’t need to tell me that most people aren’t worth a shit stain on a roach’s underwear; I’ve known that my whole life. If they can’t notice something as obvious as how amazing Armin is, then, well, there’s no hope for them.” 

Eren grinned. He leaned his head back slightly, staring at the ceiling. “I love… the way you say that like it’s a fact.”

“It _is_ a fact.” 

“I know.” Eren looked back at Levi. “Honestly… there’s not much you could do to make me love you more, than for you to love Armin.” 

“It’s not about love,” Levi insisted. He _did_ love Armin; he knew that now, and he knew she loved him, even if neither of them felt quite right saying it in so many words. “It’s just, well, it’s something about both of you. You’ve had it hard, in your own ways. Some ways I can relate to and some I can’t. But you’re still so full of… of life.”

“Are you not?” 

“God, no,” Levi said. “Most of the time I feel like I’m barely hanging on. I kind of just… experience life. I don’t always really feel like I’m living. But when I’m with the two of you, I feel surrounded by, well, _life_. I can’t not be attracted to that. I can’t help but praise it.” 

Levi watched Eren’s expression change as he took that in, from his reappearing smile to outright worry. 

“Are… are you okay?” Eren asked. 

“What do you mean?” Levi was certain the answer would be _no_ , but he wanted to know what he was answering first. He started moving towards the bedroom, and Eren followed. 

“I just, um. I know that feeling. After the accident, when I woke up, and I basically couldn’t do anything like I was used to, it was really frustrating. To the point where I just didn’t feel like I was living anymore, just going through the motions. Waking up, eating, breathing, sleeping, and doing it again the next day.” Eren shrugged, and he stuffed his hands into his pockets when they stopped in front of Levi’s bed, and Levi turned to him. “I still feel like that sometimes. There are still things I can’t do, things I can’t remember. I was a really different person before the accident, and I don’t know if I’ll ever totally get used to who I am now. But I just… I did a lot of stuff I’m not proud of, during that time. Not on the level of, you know.” 

Levi did know what he was referring to, from his arm twitching if not from context, and let him keep it vague. 

“Mostly I did stuff to myself, that I shouldn’t have. I didn’t want to stop living; I just didn’t want to live the life I had. I don’t… want that, for you, or anyone.”

“I’m.” Levi hesitated. Could he really say he was _fine_? That he’d never done to himself what Eren was implying? That he hadn’t done anything self-destructive, even recently? No. He couldn’t honestly say that. “I guess I’m not okay. And, if you’ve felt like I do, you know that there’s no cure-all for it, and you can’t just love someone out of their head. It happens. I do my best, I guess. Being around you and Armin, well, it helps, in a way. Not completely, but. It’s something.” 

“I’m glad. However we can help you… yeah.” It wasn’t eloquent, but Levi caught Eren’s meaning well enough. 

“How about you?” Levi asked. 

“I’m pretty much past it. I mean, it comes back every once in a while. I just feel empty or useless, ‘cause I remember all the things I used to be able to do, but it passes.”

“And Armin?” 

Eren shook his head. “Far as I know, she’s never really been in that place. She’s got her own unfair share of not-so-great thoughts, but they’re different. She’s definitely alive.” 

“Who’s alive?” Armin asked, back from her shower. 

“Oh. You.”

Armin looked at Eren, questions in her eyes. “What were you two talking about?” 

“Well…” Eren looked to Levi. “Depression?” 

“Yeah,” Levi said. 

“Oh.” Armin opened up her drawer and pulled out underwear, slipping it on under her towel. “Yeah, I’ve never really been there. I’ve had moments when I felt kind of useless, but it passes. It was always more part of mourning for me, than part of my life. I never had to…” Armin paused, not sure what she was about to say was right. “Never mind.”

“What is it?” Levi asked. 

“I don’t want to presume…” 

“You never mourned yourself?” Eren guessed. He started to undress, assuming he would take next shower. 

“I… yes,” Armin admitted. “I’ve felt bad for myself, definitely; I have a lot of anxiety, that’s pretty obvious; and you know there are a lot of times I don’t like myself very much, but not in that way.” 

“I think that’s a, well, not universal, but not inappropriate way to look at it,” Levi said. 

“I think the closest I’ve come to that,” Armin said, “was a few weeks ago. I definitely didn’t feel alive. But it was more like, hmm, how do I put this…” Armin pulled on the big T-shirt Levi handed her. She had her own pyjamas, but had grown used to wearing Levi’s instead. “It didn’t feel like I was myself. I think it had the potential to go that way, become something bigger and more like depression, if it lasted longer. But as it was, I don’t think that was it.” 

“Hmm.” Levi lifted his arms, and Armin almost fell into them. “I hope you never have to feel that way.” 

“Thank you.” 

Levi leaned his head against Armin’s neck and breathed in. “You smell clean.” 

“You don’t.” Not that Levi smelled bad; Armin just wanted to tease him. “Go shower.” 

Eren was already stepping out of his pants. “Um? I was gonna…”

“By all means,” Levi said, tugging Armin closer. Armin giggled and wrapped her arms more firmly around his shoulders. 

“Don’t get me too sweaty; I just showered,” Armin reminded him, though she made no effort to actually stop Levi from pressing his lips to her neck. 

“I’m right here!” Eren whined, and Armin laughed at him. 

“Yeah! You’re too far,” Armin said, and she gasped when Levi bit her. “That’s gonna show!” 

“More than the others?” Levi murmured. 

“Good point,” Armin said. “Do it again.” She wriggled in delight when he did, and laughed when she felt Eren’s hands on her hips. 

\---

“So what you do is, you start the scene, and you play ‘Sexyback’ by Justin Timberlake, and if what happens in the scene matches up with the song, it’s Certified Sexy. Also, you’ll probably think it’s hilarious.” 

Armin was explaining a game that Mikasa had come up with a few years earlier -- The Sexy Game. They didn’t play it often anymore, but there were some movies that just… _needed it_. Like _Interview with a Vampire_. And any of the _Star Trek_ movies. 

Levi couldn’t hold back a chuckle as he thought about it; a certain scene from an anime he’d watched recently came to mind. 

Armin was also leading Eren and Levi down towards the campus; there was a free concert for one of the local bands she liked playing on the main lawn later that day. She’d had work early in the morning, a four-hour shift at the library including opening at eight AM, had gone back to Levi’s apartment after grabbing lunch with some of her and Eren’s friends, and they were heading back a bit early to take advantage of the good weather. 

What Armin hadn’t expected was Levi staring at the group of middle-aged women handing out small books in front of the main entrance to the campus. 

“They’re still doing that?” Levi asked, incredulous. 

“Huh?” 

Levi pointed. “Them. Every year, around this time, a bunch of people from the Unitarian church we just passed by come here and hand out Bibles.” 

“Oh. That’s a little…” Armin frowned, staring at the women with suspicion. 

“Not like _that_ ,” Levi assured. “Every church around here has a rainbow flag up for a reason. They do this, the handing out Bibles and talking to students, to sort of show that there’s a place anyone can come and worship -- even non-Christians. If you talk to them, they’ll tell you the same.”

“How do you know this?” Armin asked. 

“I fought with them my first year here. Or, I tried to; I thought they were, like, trying to turn the queer school straight, but they were actually really lovely.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that word,” Armin observed. 

“What, queer? I’m queer as fuck. It’s one of my favourite words.” 

“No, ‘lovely’. It doesn’t seem like a very, _you_ , kind of word,” Armin attempted to explain. 

“Oh. I guess not.” 

Eren was already running ahead to talk to one of the women. When Levi and Armin noticed, they sped up to catch up with him. 

“We’re all about unifying through active love and acceptance of all types of people,” the woman was explaining. Eren smiled at her all sunshiney despite that he’d only woken up about a half hour earlier. “And we come to campus because a lot of times, students will forget that there’s a way to worship, or celebrate, or whatever you want to do. Sometimes you don’t know that there’s a place that welcomes you, no matter who you are. Everyone deserves to feel close to God, and to feel close to one another.” 

“That’s so great to know. I thought you guys were just a regular church that made us breakfast twice a year. Ah--” Eren rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that…” 

The woman laughed. “I understand what you mean. Midnight Breakfast is just one way we try to reach out, and one way we try to bring everyone together. We have some other events as well. In addition to our mass, open worship, and things like that, we also have group discussions that a lot of people find therapeutic, and we partner with the other places of worship in town to organise things like vigils for victims of hate crimes, and yearly events like Transgender Day of Remembrance. We also walk in the Pride March and hold a special service after the parade is over. Plenty more, too; I couldn’t name it all.” 

“That’s fantastic.”

“Oh, it’s just the right thing to do, to love all of God’s creations.” She held out one of the little books she was holding; a green pleather cover had gold lettering impressed into it that said _New Testament_. “Would you like a Bible?” 

“No, thank you. I appreciate it but I’m not very religious. I’d say, save it for someone who can use it better than me.” Eren did, however, take the schedule she offered. “Thanks for your time! Have a nice day.” 

“You too.” 

Eren left her to rejoin his partners. “Wow! She was nice.” 

“They usually are,” Levi said. 

Eren opened up the pamphlet containing a schedule of some of the church’s major events, and Armin looked on over his shoulder. “Wow, that really is a lot,” Armin said, after skimming some of the occasions. She pointed to one scheduled for the following November. “We should go to that.”

“What is it?” Eren asked. The woman he’d talked to had mentioned it, but he wasn’t totally sure what it was. 

“Trans Day of Remembrance is kind of a… cumulative vigil, for trans people who died by suicide or murder.” 

“Oh. That’s.” Eren felt something tighten in his chest. He put one arm around Armin’s waist. 

“Yeah, I know. It’s scary to think about, but just forgetting them… it’s not an option. Not for me.” Armin leaned more heavily against him. “I went last semester. Um, in disguise, sort of.” 

“I would’ve gone with you.” 

“I know you would, now, but I was really afraid then. I didn’t want anyone to know. Precisely because of the reason this vigil has to exist at all.” Armin looked over at Levi, who had his hands in his pockets. “Would you come with us?”

“Of course. I go every year,” Levi said. “Ever since I first moved here. The church gets fuller every year, and there are more and more speakers. It’s actually… a really nice space to be in. I’m not usually good with grief, but something about it makes it…” He cut himself off, pushing his hands deeper into his pockets. 

“I didn’t realise you were already so involved,” Armin said. 

Levi shrugged. “I’ve known a lot of trans people. Mostly trans women. It just felt like I had to be there. I owed it to them, especially the ones I knew for too short a time. And after I got there, I sort of felt like I owed it to myself.” 

“Are you trans?” Eren asked. 

Armin’s hands tightened their grip, on the pamphlet and on the back of Eren’s shirt. She had wondered, but never asked, wasn’t planning to ask, didn’t want to pressure Levi into anything -- but despite Armin’s long agonising over it, Eren asked so casually, curiously, but without expectation. 

Levi smirked. “Good question.” He started walking, past them, between the gates of the main entrance. Eren watched him go; Armin stayed staring at the place Levi had just stood, shocked to still to move. 

“Levi?” Eren called. 

“So where’s this concert again?” Levi asked, despite knowing already that it was on the main lawn in front of the campus centre building. 

Eren moved to follow him, half-dragging Armin along. “Levi, wait!” 

Levi stopped, waiting for the pair to catch up to him. He steeled himself -- against what, he wasn’t sure. 

“Levi,” Armin breathed out. 

He turned just his head to look at her. “Center lawn, yeah?” 

Now that the question had been asked, Armin found she desperately wanted an answer. She might have pushed, against her better judgement, but she saw a sparkle of something in Levi’s eyes. Not fear, not confusion, not excitement; not anything she might have expected. Instead, something that clearly said _not now_. 

“Yeah,” Armin responded, and let Levi lead the way. 

“Wait, what about --” Eren started, but Armin pinched him. “Ack! Okay. Dropping it.” 

The concert was fun; it was a pair of young women with an acoustic guitar and a toy piano, one (Anka) singing and the other (Marlene) rapping. Even despite the tension that had flared between the three of them before arriving, Armin, Eren, and Levi were able to lose themselves to the music for the hour and a half the women played. 

Except for a brief time -- between two songs, Anka mentioned it was her favourite day of the year. Marlene agreed, and mentioned how every year, without fail, even if it was Sunday, those ladies from the church would always hand out Bibles on the 20th of April. Anka then introduced their next song, “Getting High for Jesus”. 

“You okay?” Eren asked, nudging Levi’s side. 

“Yeah. It’s really just the smell that gets to me. I mean, I still find 4/20 jokes funny.” Levi looked at him. “Unless you meant something else?” 

“That’s what I was asking about. Is something else wrong?” 

“No, nothing’s wrong.” It wasn’t a lie, just not maybe totally true either. Levi glanced at Armin, who was blissfully enjoying her concert. No reason to disturb her. “We’ll talk about it later,” Levi said. “I don’t mean later today, just, later. Eventually.” 

“Okay. I won’t push or anything.” 

“...Thanks,” Levi said, in a low voice Eren could barely hear over the music. But he did hear, and Eren leaned into Levi, bumping shoulders in a gesture of comfort. When he moved away, Levi leaned into him. 

The temperature dropped quickly as the sun went down, and soon all three of them were huddled together for warmth in the last few minutes of the performance. After it was over, Armin picked up a book from the library (which she needed for the homework she hadn’t finished yet) and they all headed back home. Eren’s teeth chattered and he shivered, hugging himself; he had forgone his usual sweatshirt, thinking it was warm enough, but in just his shirt the night was bitterly cold even with an orange glow still peeking over the horizon, the sun having set not long before. 

Armin picked up her homework where she had left off the previous day, her books still on the kitchen table; Eren took up one of Levi’s spare drawing boards and prepared to draw him while Levi ordered a pizza for dinner, going lazy because they all felt a lethargy seeping into their bones that only pizza could satisfy. Also because Armin asked. Then he went back to his painting, putting in the last details to Eren as he had been for the last several days. 

The pizza came, was paid for, and sat untouched on the kitchen counter for several hours. 

Once she finished her last reading, Armin came to the front room and draped herself over Levi’s shoulders. “Looks amazing.” 

“Stay like that,” Eren said. He’d finished his first drawing long before, and started on a second, more detailed one; he erased some lines and started to sketch Armin’s outline in over Levi’s back. 

Armin smiled and stayed where she was, hoping she wasn’t distracting Levi, who continued to draw in short, fine lines of heavily-diluted black paint over Eren’s chest with his tiniest brush. 

“I’ll be done tonight,” Levi said. “You ready for pictures?” he asked Armin. 

Armin’s heart beat a little faster; she hoped Levi didn’t mistake the thumping he could certainly feel on his back for fear. It was all excitement. “Whenever you are.” 

“Hm.” Levi acknowledged her answer as neutrally as possible. He still didn’t feel entirely comfortable with Armin’s decision, but in the end it was _her_ decision, and he wanted to paint her. He had more than a year to decide on whether or not he would display the painting, but part of him knew Eren and Armin came as a pair. He couldn’t, in good conscience, display one without the other if he had the option of both. It would be like picking favourites between the actual people, which he would never want to do. 

Levi turned his head until he could look at Armin. He touched his lips to hers, and Armin leaned into the kiss, her eyes closing before they even met. She chased him for another one. 

“What was that for?” Armin asked, smiling. 

“It was just a kiss,” Levi said. 

“Nope. That was even sweeter than Eren’s kisses. What’s it for?” 

“You know what,” Levi said, looking back at his painting. 

Armin kissed his cheek. “I know. Me too.” She watched his brush move, admiring the level of detail and how different the painting looked up close. She supposed it was because she was only starting out in drawing anything more than stick figures, but most art still seemed like magic to her; Levi’s paintings, which looked more like photos than photos did, but turned into individual strokes at the painter’s distance, were definitely high on the art magic scale. “How do you do that?” Armin asked. 

“Which part?” 

“It doesn’t look like anything this close, but it looks like everything from far away.”

“I’m not sure. Practice, mostly; a little laziness. It doesn’t need to look like anything this close. Most of the time it looks better from far away if it looks like nothing when I sit here and do it. Most people will look for the best distance anyway, or they’ll see it in photos at a size that hides the individual brush strokes.” 

“Does that bother you?” Armin asked. 

“Not at all. My paintings wouldn’t exist without photos in the first place. And I’d rather have a lot of people see the photos than not see the paintings at all.” 

“That’s a good point.” 

Levi painted in silence for a while, Armin still hanging off his shoulders. Eren continued to draw the pair, lit from above by a lamp clipped to the easel. 

“For my last painting before the show,” Levi said, slowly, “I think I’m going to paint myself.” 

“Oh.” 

“I haven’t done a self-portrait in years. It was one of my first big paintings.” Levi took his brush away from the canvas, resting it on his palette while he looked over his painting. “I’ll put both in the show. I’m thinking of a theme of beginnings and endings.” 

“You seem a little young to tackle a theme like that.”

“Maybe I am,” Levi said. “But I’m not going to be so cliche to start a project about gender and say my show’s theme is transition. That’s not what the change was about, in the first place, and the connotation isn’t something I want.” 

“Pairs.” 

“Hm?”

“Pairs. If you show the paintings I think you will, you’ll have five pairs. A pair of you; Eren and I, the couple; Petra and Nifa, the siblings; Erwin and Hanji, your closest friends; and a pair of projects.”

“Oh. That’s good.” Levi tapped the back end of his brush against a part of the canvas where he couldn’t tell if it was dusty or crusty. It was the former, and dust fell away to make the paint shiny once more. “I’m not sure yet, because I have time to do a few more paintings in between now and then, and I have a few other old ones, but I’ll keep that in mind.” Armin had been spot-on in guessing what Levi’s current line-up was; even despite his reservations about showing Armin’s painting, and therefore Eren’s as well, some part of him knew that in the end it would probably go exactly as Armin had said. 

“I was surprised Nifa and Petra were sisters,” Levi said, to change the subject a bit. “They’re as far apart in age as we are. Maybe more; Nifa’s older than I am.”

“Really? But Nifa’s a student, isn’t he?” 

“He?”

“I think Nifa switches between he and she.”

“Ah. Well, he’s a non-traditional student.”

“Rose Scholar?” Armin asked, using the name Wall applied to the students who started at the college later in life. 

“Mm-hm.”

“I guess their parents just took a while to bother…”

“Maybe.” 

“How’d you know Nifa was older? They look like they could be twins.” 

“Oh. I slept with her, about eight years ago.” 

“Oh! That would make sense.” 

Levi could feel Armin’s face heating up against his cheek. “Is that weird? Me telling you who I’ve slept with.”

“Not weird exactly,” Armin answered. “I guess I’m just not used to it, but I don’t mind. It’s very you, and I like you, so I like hearing it.”

“You _like_ me, do you?” Levi teased. 

“Shush. You know how I feel.” Armin rubbed her cheek against Levi’s. Levi turned, swivelling his chair until he faced Armin completely, and he kissed her again, holding his lips against hers until she pulled back, her light blush having turned unbearably warm and red. “I really like how you’re kissing me today.” 

“What am I doing?”

“It’s really… soft, and gentle. I like that sometimes.” 

Levi kissed Armin again, a quick one, and Armin grinned and squeaked before hiding her face in his shoulder. Levi looked over her shoulder and saw Eren smiling at the two of them. “Oh. You were drawing us.”

“It’s okay. I’m done.” Eren stood up. “Can I… join you?” 

Levi nudged at Armin’s head with his chin, and she nodded, not moving away from him. Levi passed on the permission to Eren, who came over and put his arms around both of them. 

“The painting looks amazing.”

Levi took a deep breath, and let it out so loud it might have been a sigh. “I think it’s done.” 

Eren brushed his fingers through Armin’s hair, and she seemed to melt against Levi. “I love it.” 

Levi gave Eren the same gentle kiss he’d given Armin. 

“Wow. That is a nice kiss,” Eren said. 

“Isn’t it?” Armin mumbled, still boneless with Eren’s fingers in her hair. 

“I don’t get what’s so different about it,” Levi said. “It’s just a kiss.” 

“You’re kissing with love, I think,” Eren said. 

“I didn’t before?” Levi grumbled. 

“Mm, no. Kissing while you’re in love isn’t the same as kissing _with_ love. Putting your love into the kiss.” 

Armin pulled away to look at Levi. Levi didn’t manage to meet her eyes. “Maybe. I think it’s something else, though.”

“Like what?” 

“I think he’s happy,” Armin said. 

“Hmm. I see what you mean.” Eren moved his free hand from Levi’s hip to his face. “Are you happy, Levi?” 

Levi leaned into Eren’s hand, and his arms tightened around Armin’s waist. “I might be.” 

Eren and Armin shared a smile that hit Levi like a ray of morning sunshine, despite that it was nearing nine P.M. They both went in for a kiss at the same time, Armin managing to edge her way in first, and Eren following close behind. 

“Is that what my kisses feel like?” Levi asked. 

“Let’s see,” Armin said. She kissed Eren, and both of them nodded. “Yup, it’s like that,” Armin confirmed, and she kissed Levi again. 

“That is nice,” Levi said. 


	52. Pizza and Forgetting Who Is Left-Handed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the last full week of classes before finals, also known as The Crying Time… It helps to not have to go through it alone.

Levi preferred natural lighting for this series of paintings, mostly because he’d gotten lucky enough to have it for the first two photo shoots, so he left Armin’s photos for the next day. Instead, the three of them piled onto the sofa for the last few hours of the night, with paper plates in hand and the pizza box resting up on the coffee table, a few paper towels underneath to catch any wayward, leaky grease. Levi would undoubtedly give the table a thorough cleaning afterwards either way, but it eased his mind a little. 

The pizza was just a plain pie with extra sauce and cheese. Levi’s usual was to get this, topped with half mushroom, half peppers, tomato slices, and olives, but he didn’t feel like going all out tonight. He also got it unsliced, so he could cut it up into nine for the three of them. A large pizza would usually last him two days or more on his own, but the three of them polished off the whole pizza within an hour, finding they were suddenly ravenous after not feeling much of an appetite at all while they worked at their respective assignments. 

Eren, having put away his third of the pizza fastest, laid down with his head on Armin’s lap. Armin protested briefly, saying he should really sit up a while while he was digesting, but he reminded her of his iron stomach and she let him do his thing, warning him to watch out for falling bits of cheese or crumbs from her plate. 

Armin felt eyes on her; she looked to the side to see Levi staring at her, with his last slice of pizza more or less forgotten on his plate. So she stared back. After a while Armin’s smile turned bashful and her eyelids fluttered with the urge to break eye contact, but she didn’t look away. Armin fidgeted a little where she sat, watching Levi watching her. 

A little amusement played across Levi’s face as he watched her squirm under his gaze. He supposed Armin wasn’t used to being stared at like this, which was a shame. She was certainly nice to look at, especially when she was being so cutely flustered and staring right back at him. 

Armin shook her head, flipping her hair back a little, though it fell right back in her face. It was true; she _wasn’t_ used to being stared at. When Eren did it it sort of confused and flustered her, but maybe it was her familiarity with him that allowed her to just let it happen. But when it involved Levi, well, they were still sort of in that honeymoon-stage of excited about each other but not totally settled into their relationship being a normal, everyday thing, and on top of that he just didn’t usually stare this much at someone he wasn’t painting. So, Armin wasn’t used to it, and was sure she wouldn’t get used to it for a long time. She felt a little electric fuzziness on her skin, like the feeling of being watched times a thousand because Armin could see Levi watching her and the confirmation made it somehow more electric. Armin wished she could keep herself as composed as Levi could, but even so, his eyes smiled at her when he watched her, and she felt herself falling deeper. 

“You’re cute,” Armin blurted out, immediately covering her mouth with her hand. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but she didn’t stop smiling and she didn’t break eye contact. 

Levi’s eyes went wide. “ _You’re_ cute,” he insisted. 

“You.” Before Levi could retaliate, Armin leaned across the distance between them and kissed him. He kissed back as a reflex, and Armin pulled away with a little squeak, covering her mouth once more. 

“Is he still doing it?” Eren asked, referring to the whole _kissing with happiness_ thing from before. 

“Mm-hm,” Armin confirmed, and Eren grinned up at her. He reached up, and even if the angle was a little uncomfortable, Armin leaned down to pass on the kiss, not minding at all that it was pizza-flavoured. 

Levi stuffed the last several bites worth of his pizza in his mouth all at once, chewing slowly and nearly choking it down, to avoid letting himself smile. Why he did that, he wasn’t sure; Eren and Armin had seen him smile more than anyone else still living, and he didn’t mind it, really. Not when it was them. It was just habit -- a habit he probably should break if he was really committed to opening his heart to these two wonderful people. 

Levi’s cell phone rang, breaking his staring contest with Armin. He fished it out of his pocket, wondering who the fuck could possibly be calling at ten in the evening. He didn’t recognise the number, only the New York area code, but he picked it up anyway just to yell at whoever was on the other line. “It’s fucking ten PM,” he growled into the phone, instead of a hello. He got up from the couch, intending to give the caller a piece of his mind in the guest room where Eren and Armin wouldn’t be too disturbed by it. 

“ _Is this Levi Ackerman?_ ” 

“Yes, it is, and who the fuck are you that you think this is a good time to call?” 

“ _Levi Ackerman, from the Underground?_ ” the caller asked, instead of answering his question. 

Levi stopped short, halfway down the hall. “How do you know about that?” His voice was dangerous. Eren sat up, and he and Armin peered over the back of the sofa at Levi. 

“ _I don’t know if you remember me. My name is Farlan Church._ ” 

“Far…?” Levi felt a swelling in his chest, a pressure that choked his throat. He leaned against the wall, and slid down to collapse heavily on the floor. Armin and Eren got off the couch, rushing to him. 

“What’s wrong?” Armin asked. The pair fussed over Levi, near panicking because his eyes were watery and they couldn’t believe a phone call was enough to make the ever stoic Levi cry. 

“ _Izzy’s here too. She wants me to say hello from her too._ ” 

“Isabel…” Levi closed his eyes and cracked a smile. “She still wearing those pigtails?” 

“ _Of course. Though they’re down her back now._ ” 

“Who is it?” Armin asked. 

“It’s my siblings,” Levi answered, feeling like the child he never really was. “They’re…” He couldn’t find a word to use -- he hadn’t heard from them in years, didn’t know if they were even… if they _were_ at all. “They’re alive.” 

Realisation dawned on Armin and Eren’s faces, and they slumped against Levi, cuddling him from either side. 

Farlan chuckled through the phone. “ _We got along well enough without you before you showed up; we could do it again after you left._ ” 

“How did you find me?” 

“ _Stohess’s calendar, your website, your contact information. Most artists don’t have their home phone number listed, you know._ ” 

“Of course not…” Levi leaned his head back. “How are you two?” 

“ _We’re good. Could be better, but like you said, we’re alive._ ”

“You’re not… still on the streets, are you?” Levi’s heart twisted at the thought. He knew it was unlikely that they would get a break like he did, but he couldn’t help but hope. 

“ _Not much anymore. We move a lot. We’re still in the City, though. Izzy’s tutoring sign language and I’m… I guess you could call me a musician. We bring in enough to stay off the streets most of the time. You seem to be doing pretty well for yourself, Le Creux._ ”

“Izzy was part of that, too. I’m just Levi on my own.” 

“You should invite them to visit,” Armin suggested. 

“ _Who’s that?”_ Farlan asked. “ _You got a girlfriend or something? Or, boyfriend, knowing you._ ”

“Both, actually,” Levi said, carefully. “That was my girlfriend, Armin.” He heart Armin laugh and felt her nose press into his shoulder. 

“ _Hmm, fancy Levi with your fancy multiple partners._ ”

He breathed a sigh of relief; he didn’t know what he would do if his siblings couldn’t accept all of his relationship. “She’s saying you should visit.”

“ _I heard her._ ” Farlan paused, then sighed. “ _I don’t think we can manage it._ ”

“I’ll pay for the trip, and whatever time you lose at work.” 

“ _You don’t have to do that._ ”

“I want to. What’s mine is yours,” Levi said, and Armin and Eren looked at each other from his either side, recognising those words. 

There was another pause, and Levi was certain Farlan was debating the idea with Isabel. He clutched at his chest, remembering how they would do this when he was with them, how they would trace out letters on one another’s palms, slowly communicating their private conversations to one another. He wondered if they still did that, or if they had found another way to converse on common ground. 

After a while, during which Levi remained very patient, Farlan returned with: “ _Izzy wants you to know that you’re a fucking stuck-up rich person now and that pisses her off, but she still wants to see you._ ”

Levi couldn’t help but laugh, the warmth in his chest expanding even more when Eren and Armin chuckled as well and unconsciously leaned in closer to him. “When’s the best time for you to take off?”

“ _Izzy can’t, since she’s tutoring but this week the schools have spring break so she’s not busy. I don’t have anything booked Thursday to Sunday; does that work?_ ”

“Sure. It’s getting close to finals, but that’s only more work for the students, so I’ll be around.” 

“ _You’re a teacher too, now?_ ”

Levi suddenly realised how strange the idea must seem, especially to two people who knew him mainly as an illiterate criminal. “Visiting professor of art, for three semesters.”

“ _I can’t even imagine that._ ”

“I’ve changed a lot since you last saw me.”

“ _I’m sure. Then again, you were always the leader-type. I bet you’re mean to your students, though_ ,” he laughed. 

“Fuck you, my students love me.”

Armin and Eren burst into laughter of their own. “Y-yeah,” Eren said, “Your _students_ sure do… _love_ you…” 

“Fuck you too, Eren.” 

“ _You have both your darlings there with you?_ ”

“Darlings…” Levi repeated. “Yeah, I guess so.” He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling oddly self-conscious at his use of the endearment, but it also felt really _nice_ , and damn it if Levi couldn’t allow himself a nice thing or two. Armin and Eren shared a look, a smiley-happy look that made Levi’s ice heart melt. Yeah, definitely nice, if it made his darlings happy too. 

“ _That’s so sweet. I hope we can meet them while we’re there._ ”

“You will. They’re staying with me, actually. It’s a long story, but, they can’t stay in their dorm right now --”

“ _Dorm?_ ”

Levi’s stomach plummeted. “Um.”

“ _Levi, are you dating your students?_ ”

“I… well, not _my_ students. Students, yes. ” 

“ _Oh. Oh. I get it. That’s why he said, your students love you._ ”

“Not my students, I said.” Levi felt his heart beat hard in his chest, and Eren’s hand slowly moving over his back, trying to calm him before it turned into something more severe. 

“ _Hm. Well. I never pegged you for that kind of guy._ ” For a man who was usually extremely expressive with his voice, Farlan’s tone was for once completely unreadable. Flat, even. 

Levi kind of wished he had a corded phone so he could twist his fingers nervously in the coil; he made do with gripping hard at the white denim of his pants. “What kind of guy?”

“ _Whatever the male equivalent of a cougar is, I guess. I’m sure we’ll… talk about it when we’re there._ ”

“Are you angry?” Levi asked, hoping, but certainly not expecting, that Farlan would say he wasn’t. 

“ _No,_ ” Farlan said. 

Levi sighed in relief. 

“ _I’m surprised. I wouldn’t have made the same choices, but…_ ” Farlan paused, and there came a little scraping noise from the phone. “ _You were always so miserable when I knew you. Izzy says in the photos she’s seen of you recently, at gallery openings, you still look miserable. So if they make you happy, and you make them happy, then I’m happy for you too._ ” 

“Thank you.”

“ _I can’t promise Izzy will agree._ ”

Probably not, Levi thought, seeing as Isabel was a teacher herself, and probably of much younger students. Still, he hoped. “I guess I’ll find out.” Levi sighed again -- how many times has he sighed so far on this one phone call? “Can you, uh, text me an email address I can forward your tickets to?”

“ _I’ll have Izzy give you hers. Do you have a train station nearby? That would be best for us, if you can manage it._ ”

“Yeah. There’s only two trains a day, one in either direction, but we have a platform downtown. If I can’t find anything there, I’ll get you from Springfield.”

“ _Thank you so much, Levi._ ”

“Don’t mention it. It’s not all out of the kindness of my heart; I want to see you too.”

“ _And that’s because you’re kind. You may have been a fight club kid and a violent thief teen but I always knew you had a heart, however shrivelled it might be. Turns out it’s a heart big and strong enough to be in love with two people and still have room for us._ ”

“There’s always room for you.” 

Farlan laughed. “ _We’ll see you soon, Levi; you probably need sleep, though. Izzy just noticed it’s bedtime._ ”

“Yeah. I guess so. Good night.”

“ _Good night, Levi._ ”

Levi took the phone away from his ear and ended the call, staring at his screen for a minute or so. He saved the number under _Farlan &Isabel_ and locked his phone. 

“Wow,” Armin said. 

“Yeah,” Levi agreed. 

“Bed?” Eren suggested.

“Definitely,” Levi said. 

\---

Levi realised when he awoke that neither he nor either one of his partners had showered the night before. He realised this because he woke up feeling grimy, and Armin’s hair was just a little greasy tucked under his chin, and Eren’s arm thrown over the both of them was tacky with sweat even though it wasn’t overly warm in the bedroom. 

He let out a very quiet groan and scooted out of the bed, preparing for a morning run that would be slightly more uncomfortable than usual. 

As he pulled a knit hat over his head, he remembered the phone call from the night before, and resolved to buy his siblings’ train tickets after his run and after his shower. 

The weather was warming up, but at four in the morning it was still far too cold to go out without a jacket and something to cover his fuzzy head. Levi took his usual route through town, then back and around the campus, every so often admiring the view or his breath puffing in clouds in front of him. The mist rising off the pond was breathtaking, as the sun’s rays came up beyond the horizon in the last quarter of his run. The mist curled around the sandbar and center island as well as the middle of crew practice. _Isabel will love to see this_ , Levi thought, _if I can get her out of bed early enough_. He wouldn’t be surprised if Isabel’s tendency to sleep late had endured all these years. 

As Levi’s path took him closer to the boathouse, he hear music playing from its pond-side speakers. He looked out to the rowers and realised they were training to row according to the calls of the coxswain and the rhythm of those around them, and ignore any external noise, including the beat of the music. He remembered that drill from his short time on the team. Some things never changed. He wondered if they still had the same coach, and if that coach knew he was here, if that coach remembered Levi as the student he’d called a failure when academic probation pulled him off the team. 

As he got close, the music’s clarity increased and he could make out Lady Gaga’s voice, but didn’t recognise the song. Levi wondered what Farlan’s music sounded like, and where he was playing. He didn’t think Farlan played music when they were young, but then, there were a lot of things Levi didn’t know about Farlan. 

He wondered what it was like for the two of them… Farlan and Isabel both had creative endeavors the other could not experience at all. He wondered if Farlan felt left out, because his two siblings made art together when they were teenagers and now one of them was famous for it, and he’d never seen a bit of it; or if Isabel felt left out that Levi had an easier time conversing with Farlan, because he had only ever tried to learn sign language when he was with them. 

Levi wondered if that was important to them. He decided, as he always used to, that he could ask them, and they would be honest, but he would never really understand. 

Levi made his way back home to shower and, eventually, wake up his bedmates. It was their last full week of classes; at the very least, Armin would probably want to make a good impression. Eren would probably want to sleep in, which meant Levi would have to drag him into the shower… 

\---

Levi returned to his room to find, unsurprisingly, Armin and Eren still asleep. Armin had a bit of Eren’s pudding-hair in her mouth, seeming unbothered by this. One of Armin’s hands was curled into a loose fist and tucked under her chin, and Levi wondered if she was dreaming of herself as a cat, chewing on some yarn. Eren looked to be so thoroughly asleep as to have gone past the land of dreams into blissful brain static; his mouth was open, and while he didn’t snore his slow breathing was audible from across the room. 

Armin stirred as Levi came close. “Mm?” she murmured, then made a disgusted noise as she spat Eren’s hair out of her mouth. “Gross. What time is it?”

“Six,” Levi answered. “Go back to sleep.” 

“Might as well get up,” Armin insisted, and she extracted herself from Eren’s octopus grip with practiced ease, managing not to wake him just yet. Armin followed Levi into the bathroom; she brushed her teeth and used the toilet while he got ready to shower. A mix of her half-asleep state and her comfort around Levi made Armin not really even think about the fact that he was in the room as something for her to be concerned about. She then undressed and followed him into the shower, and Levi didn’t question it, nor did he question Armin firmly attaching her lips to his once they were both in. 

Hands traced wet skin. Levi touched Armin’s ribs, pressed into soft skin at her waist, and trailed down over her hips to rest his palms on her ass. Armin moved the opposite direction, touching his upper arms, his shoulders, then kneading his back before resting her elbows on his shoulders and crossing her wrists behind his neck. 

Armin spoke against Levi’s lips, unwilling to move any further back. “Where’s all the muscle come from, anyway? The only working out I ever see you do is running.” 

“When you’re not around, I do stuff. I have a gym membership nearby and I go some mornings when you have class and I don’t. I have some free weights around here too, but when I’m home I mostly use my own body weight.”

“What do you mean?”

“Squats, handstand push-ups; that kind of thing.”

“Handstand push-ups?” Armin repeated, a glint in her eye. That sounded like something she wanted to see. “Show me later.” 

Levi rolled his eyes. “Alright. It’s not as sexy as you think.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Armin then decided kissing time was over, and tucked her head into Levi’s neck. They had a good two hours before they even needed to wake Eren and rush him through a shower, so they had time to waste just soaking. “So. Your siblings are coming.”

“Yeah. Is that okay?” 

“Of course. It’s your house.” 

“Still. I want you to be comfortable here.”

“I am. And I suggested it in the first place.” Armin sighed. “I’m just a little surprised at the timing. It’s really soon. I understand, though; you miss them.” 

“I do.” 

“Mm. I guess I was kind of hoping we could do something this weekend. The three of us, I mean. Since next weekend we’ll be studying.” 

“What did you have in mind?” Levi asked. 

Armin stepped back and gave him an incredulous look. “Did you… miss my tone, or?”

“Huh?” 

“I was trying to sound sexy.”

“Oh. I thought that was just because you were sleepy.” 

Armin leaned down and butted her head against his chest. “You…! Loser.” 

Levi kissed the top of her wet head. “We can still do that, if you want.”

“But they’ll be here,” Armin pointed out. 

“Not at night,” Levi said. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t have a spare bed.” Technically, he did, but it was the pullout sofa in front, which was broken, and he didn’t care to replace it when he never used it. “I was going to get them a hotel room.”

“Oh.” Armin looked at him again and grinned. “Okay. So we get to meet your family _and_ have a threesome.”

Levi sighed and nose at her hair. “Why… are you so obsessed with sex…?” he mumbled. 

Armin frowned. That wasn’t something she ever expected to hear Levi, of all people, say to her. “Not any more than you. Less than you, probably.” 

“That’s true.” Levi frowned as well. “Hm. Sorry.” 

“You’re actually apologising?” Armin’s incredulous look returned; this was even more unexpected than what he’d said in the first place. 

“Yes.”

“You never apologise.” Armin hadn’t heard him do so in a while, at least, and it didn’t seem like the kind of Big Deal thing that would bring an apology out of him.

“I do when I say something hurtful.”

“That wasn’t that hurtful.”

Levi stared at the shower curtain. “Never mind.” 

Armin squinted at him. “What’s wrong? And if you say ‘nothing’ I’ll kick you out of the shower.” 

“It’s just. Well. Stereotypes, and--”

 _Stereotypes_. “Oh. I see.” Armin pursed her lips. 

“I’m sorry.”

Armin stepped out of Levi’s embrace. “That actually hurt more than what you said.” 

Levi didn’t say anything, nor did he meet her eyes. He suddenly felt very, very small, and so did Armin. 

“I probably don’t need to lecture you. You know what I’m gonna say. But,” she paused, and looked up. There was a pressure behind Armin’s eyes that she didn’t want to release. “Wow. That really fucking hurts. To hear you still see me as some... autogynephilia stereotype and not as a _person_.” 

“I don’t!” Levi shouted, forgetting Eren was asleep in the next room. “I just. I fucked up.” 

“I _know_. I know you don’t try to think of me like that. But you still _do_ , if you think things like _that_ about me. It still hurts.” Armin turned away and reached for her shampoo. She wanted to be out of the shower already -- it was starting to feel too cramped -- but she was already wet so she may as well wash herself. 

“Armin…”

“Please don’t.”

“I just want to make you... not... _hurt_ anymore.”

“Maybe I want to be hurt for a little while.” Armin’s fingers stilled in her sudsy hair, gripping the strands tight. “All my life people have treated me like I’m so weak and fragile, and something to protect. Maybe I am weak, but I can take a little sadness. What hurts, though, is that it’s _you_. I haven’t been out long but I’m already used to everyone else treating me like every part of my life, everything I say and do, comes down to me being trans. As if I’m nothing else. But Eren, and Mikasa, and you -- you don’t make me feel like that. That’s why I trusted you.” Trusted. Past tense. Armin wasn’t certain she didn’t trust Levi anymore, but the word slipped out like that and she didn’t still trust him quite enough to correct it. 

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.”

“If it helps, I know how you--”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Armin almost shouted. “Don’t tell me anything you wouldn’t tell me otherwise.” Armin’s heart pounded. She knew exactly what Levi was going to say, and she didn’t want to hear it now. Not as an apology, of all things. 

Besides. It wouldn’t hurt any less. 

Armin finished washing herself in silence with her back still turned to Levi. As she stepped out and wrapped herself in a towel from the rack, she finally spoke again. “I forgive you. But it still hurts. So let me hurt for a while, okay?” 

“Okay.” 

Armin took an extra towel with her and spread it out over a pillow before climbing back into bed. It was still warm, as Eren had kept it that way. She nudged him with her cold foot and he jerked awake. 

“Fu--! G’morn.” Eren yawned, his whole face scrunching up into it. It was cute in the way that scrunchy-face dogs are cute. 

“Go shower,” Armin said, and she pulled the covers up over her head. 

As she found herself doing more and more often these days, Armin closed her eyes and slept away the pain, at least until she would have to get up again to get ready for class. 

Eren kissed Armin’s head over the blanket before he left the bed. He hadn’t heard any of what had gone on in the shower, being sound asleep and all, but Armin looked like she’d been through hell. He could sense something was wrong and that Armin didn’t want to talk about it yet, but in time he knew he would probably have to do something about it. He was happy to, but at the same time, he wished Armin and Levi could work things out on their own, for their own sake. If this kept happening, and they couldn’t learn how to deal with it, how much longer would they really be _comfortable_ around each other? And if they got to that point… Armin was absolutely the type to suffer through a relationship that wasn’t enjoyable, and Eren suspected Levi was either the very same, or the careless type who would break it off harshly with Armin if the going got rough. But they could be so good together, Eren knew, if only they learned to really _talk_ \-- not just when it was easy, but when it was hard, too. 

Eren did his business, and got in the shower just as Levi was finishing up. Levi kind of resembled a puppy that had all its fur shaved down for surgery, then got a bath right before its next well-visit, and clearly remembered the vet’s office and the terrors it had previously experienced there, and was resigned to its fate of imminent doom. It was a very specific look; Eren was surprised Levi Of The Resting Bitchface pulled it off. Yet it was nothing like Armin’s expression when she’d crawled back into bed and woken Eren up. Armin looked _tired_ , so absolutely wiped, as if she’d lived weeks with no sleep in the short time since she woke up. The kind of bone-deep tired that sucked the light out of her eyes, the flush out of her skin. Armin looked sick, almost, whereas Levi looked healthy but afraid. 

“Levi?” Eren called out. 

Levi shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not the one that should be hurt right now.”

“You know, just ‘cause you hurt someone else, doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to feel bad about it.” 

Levi gave Eren as much of a smile as he could muster, which wasn’t much. “Thanks, Eren.” He left the bathroom without another word. 

He didn’t see Armin right away, but noticed a person-shaped lump on his bed and, assuming correctly that it was Armin under there, decided to leave her be while he dressed in his usual clothes and did his usual eyeliner in the vanity mirror over his dresser. Levi went out to the front room, making his toast in the toaster without changing any of the settings, as Eren had told him to do so he wouldn’t burn it, and set the coffee maker. He opened up his laptop and bought Farlan and Isabel their train tickets into and out of Springfield, finding nothing on the train into town, then forwarded the confirmation to the email address Isabel had texted to him. He also booked them a hotel room a short walk away, one that he’d stayed at a few times long ago with clients who were passing through, who wanted to keep their night company within arm’s reach until morning, and once more recently when the water in his apartment went out. It had been a while in between, but nothing changed. He knew the rooms; he knew the staff; he knew his siblings would be comfortable there. 

Armin came out not long after, wearing loose jeans, a button-down shirt, and a thick sweater. She set herself some bread to toast and sat down across from Levi, briefly glancing at the very large, very purple, and very sparkly rubber penis that had become the so far permanent centerpiece for the kitchen table, because the suction cup at the base never did let go after the first time Levi stuck it there. 

“You know, it’s warm today,” Levi said to her. He’d checked the weather on his phone already; it would be in the low eighties by midday, a big difference from the brisk temperature during his run that morning. 

Armin just hummed in acknowledgement. “Is it…” She had no plans to change her clothes. Armin felt comfortable in this, at least for today, and there was no point in dressing for the weather if Armin would be self-conscious about it anyway. 

“Do you want me to drive you to class?” Levi asked of Armin. 

“Hm?” Armin murmured, not looking at him. 

“On my motorcycle.”

“No,” Armin said, though it had been a while since her last time and she missed it. “I was going to walk like I usually do.”

“Okay.” 

“We’d get weird looks, anyway. I don’t want you to get in trouble.” Even if Armin was hurt, it wasn’t like she didn’t still care about Levi. Of course she did. Armin didn’t mention, however, that mostly she just wanted the time alone. Not alone, precisely -- the three of them usually walked to campus together, and that was what she looked forward to today, but it was a type of aloneness with her thoughts she couldn’t have alongside the excitement of being on Levi’s bike with him. Maybe soon, though. 

Eren came out to the front room at eight-thirty, leaving him just enough time to make himself some toast before they had to leave. 

“Want me to show you those handstand push-ups before we go?” Levi asked Armin. 

“Oh. Right.” Armin looked at him, finally. “Sure.”

“What’s this?” Eren asked, and they both watched Levi get to his feet, turn around, and lean down to the floor. 

He kicked his feet over his head, steadying himself carefully. Once his body was perfectly aligned and his hands properly placed, he bent his arms, lowering his body towards the ground until his nose touched, then pushed himself back up. His arms and chest strained against his shirt, which left him with just barely enough range of motion to do this. 

Levi did this ten times, as he usually did, and then he stood back up, to applause from both Armin and Eren. 

“That was so cool,” Eren said. He looked positively ecstatic -- and then jumped in surprise when the toaster pinged and released his breakfast. He took his toast and slapped some butter on it. He reached for Armin’s hand with his, and she took it, but also noticed his other hand, holding his buttered toast, sported some sort of soft cast. 

“What’s that?” Armin asked.

“Hm? Oh, this. It’s a wrist brace.” 

Levi heard that and immediately started to fuss over his hand, taking his toast and opening up his fingers and pressing down on the meaty bit of his palm by the thumb. “Are you stretching when you draw?”

“I am, it’s just, the four classes; it’s a lot… It’ll be okay. I’m going to get it checked out over the summer, probably; I just am a little worried it’ll be worse than I think it is and they’ll tell me to stop drawing or get surgery… I can’t really afford to take a break right now, but I’ll have time in the summer.” 

“Surgery?” Armin repeated. “It’s that serious?” 

Eren shrugged. “Could be. A lot of artists have wrist issues, because we always forget to take breaks, and we’ll push ourselves through the pain, and it can get really bad. I don’t think it’s that bad yet, but I’m not a doctor so I wouldn’t know for sure. I just got the brace a few days ago and kept forgetting to wear it until now, so I don’t know if it helps yet.” 

“That’s kind of scary, having to get surgery just for drawing too much.” 

“I guess so. I mean, sometimes a break is enough to heal it, and then going easier afterwards. But sometimes it’s not enough, and if surgery fixes it, that’s better than letting all the work I did in getting to this point go to waste, isn’t it?” 

Armin gave him a strange look, but Eren didn’t comment on it. 

Eren took his hand back from Levi, opening and closing it a few times to test the strength of his fingers and wrist for the day’s work. He also took his toast back when Levi offered it. “I used to wonder if surgery would’ve fixed my head, but the doctors told me I’d just end up losing more, on top of the incredible risks that I wouldn’t have to worry about otherwise. I wasn’t ever going to get everything back the way I was healing, but surgery wouldn’t do me any good. If I’d had, say, cancer, or something lodged in there, and not a traumatic impact, it might have been different. It all depends on the injury, you know?” 

“Huh.” 

Eren could practically hear gears grinding in Armin’s head; he had no idea what she was going to come up with, but he was sure he would hear about it. She was a good thinker, after all; Armin was the best he knew. She would come up with something great. 

Those gears kept grinding all through their morning lecture. While Armin took notes as diligently as ever, Eren couldn’t help but notice how distracted she was. 

The dining hall had fried chicken and fried tofu for lunch, both of which were among Eren and Armin’s favourite Wall Meals. Several of their friends, in between bites, asked Eren about his wrist and freaked out over the possibility of surgery, no matter how minor it might be if he even had to do it. This left Armin open to continue her thoughts, which she shared with no-one quite yet. 

A few minutes before they were set to leave lunch, Connie’s phone rang (or rather, made loud growling noises) and he picked it up to a frantic voice. No-one else could make out the words, but the person’s tone, as well as Connie’s expression, seemed emergency-level. “Oh, oh shit. I understand. I’ll be right there. Stay on the phone with me, okay?” 

“What’s going on?” Mikasa asked. 

“Someone from my lab is having a crisis,” he said, and got up, throwing his backpack on. “Sash, you can finish my lunch if you want it.”

“Sure,” Sasha said, dragging the plate over. “Want me to take notes for you?” 

“Yeah. Thanks. See you,” he said, looking apologetic, before he ran out, whispering into his phone. 

“Good luck!” Eren called after him. He turned back to Mikasa, who he’d been talking to about the various types of hand and wrist injuries, and noticed her squinting after Connie. “What is it?”

Mikasa shook her head. “I don’t know. I got this weird feeling like that wasn’t the truth.”

“What do you mean?” Sasha asked. “I thought your empathy thing only worked on people you were super close to.”

“In its full capacity, yes. But I can still notice things about other friends. I’m not really sure though. I can’t think of why he would lie about that, and I’ve been wrong before. So don’t worry about it. Even if he is lying, I’m sure he has good reasons to do it.” 

Eren had a feeling Mikasa wouldn’t have said anything in the first place if she thought she was wrong, and Armin, shaken out of her previous thoughts, shared a look with Eren that seemed to express she agreed. 

“I can talk to him about it,” Jean suggested. 

Mikasa shook her head. “Like I said, he probably has his reasons.”

“Do you feel that, too?” Eren asked. 

“Maybe. I’m not sure.” Mikasa picked up her last piece of fried tofu with her fingers and popped it in her mouth. She chewed it slowly. “We should get going to class.” 

Everyone made various noises of agreement, and started to pack up their things. 

Once outside, Eren asked Armin, “What have you been thinking so hard about all day? I’m curious.” 

“Oh, um. It’s kind of silly. And obvious, I guess.” 

“What is it?”

“It was sort of, how you were talking about with injuries, there are different solutions for each one. I started thinking about, um, how I am with Levi.”

“Uh-huh.” 

“Is that weird? Comparing injuries to relationship problems.”

“If it helps you work it out, I think it’s fine. What did you come up with?”

“Well, like what you said. Some things can be fixed with a break, or by just pushing it aside and letting it go. Sometimes you need surgery instead, and that’s talking about it. Fighting, maybe. But really getting into it. I think what I’ve been doing with Levi is getting into these little arguments, and talking about it a little but then putting it aside and thinking it’s not that big a deal. When, actually, I think it might help us both to really talk about it.” 

“Well, I’ve told you this before. I’m a big fan of communication.”

“Yeah,” Armin agreed. “It’s just, I don’t want to push him into saying things he doesn’t want to say.” 

Eren sighed. He knew what Armin meant, and he couldn’t disagree. At the same time… “You should still talk to him. He’ll decide what he’s willing to tell you.” He chewed on his lip while he thought. Armin and Mikasa were the ones who were good at reading people, not him, but he had a hunch for once, and if he was right, then Armin really needed to hear it. “I think, though, what you’re more worried about is what you’ll do if Levi _does_ tell you.” 

Armin looked down at her shoes. “Yeah.” It was definitely something she didn’t want to think about, let alone talk about, lest putting too much energy into the issue tip the scales in some way, but now that it had been brought up, she couldn’t avoid it. In all seriousness -- what _would_ she do if Levi told her he was trans? 

“I just… I like men, you know?” Armin said. “It’s selfish, but I can’t help thinking that. That’s all it’s ever been. It took me so long to be able to settle on that enough to say it. But I also… Part of me wants to have someone like me that I’m close to, really close to. I can’t change whatever Levi tells me -- I don’t _want_ to change it. I… I do love him,” Armin admitted; it was her first time saying it aloud so plainly. “But I also don’t know if I can change how I think of myself, and I don’t know if I can choose between that and losing him.” 

“I don’t know if that’s something you can decide ahead of time. And I’d think the best person to talk to about it would be Levi. It’s just… more surgery.”

“I guess so.” Armin leaned into Eren at the crosswalk as they waited for the light to change. 

\---

They parted ways at the art building; Eren had class, and Armin headed back toward the apartment to do homework and, most likely, get her photos taken. 

She honestly wasn’t sure if she’d even get any homework done. If Armin knew herself, and she did, the way she was feeling she would get into it with Levi as soon as she came through the door. 

For this reason, Armin found herself taking a detour back towards the library in the middle of campus. She walked the familiar path to the quiet study area, and found a room vacant; the same one, in fact, where she had once touched herself months earlier. Armin took the room and locked the door, spreading out her books. 

If she could get a little work done, and go back maybe an hour before her work shift, Levi could still take her pictures, and then she could leave, and then they wouldn’t have to fight… right? 

Armin sat down and started to read. 

She finished her short reading quickly, having highlighted and made notes of what seemed most relevant. She read over her notes and made a list of possible topics for that week’s short paper. She glanced at her planner, with its list of homework assignments, and checked off the reading and the list of potential topics. 

She sighed. 

She packed up. 

“I can’t just avoid him,” she said to herself, and she left the room. Someone immediately got up from the nearby tables and rushed into the room as soon as she left, so there went her way back. The only way was forward. 

So, Armin headed for the apartment once more, this time for real. Along the way she looked into store windows, peered down side streets, almost hoping something would catch her interest, but strangely for the turning of the seasons, nothing did. So weird; it was about to be the sundress time of year, and Armin should totally have something or other catch her eye, but the world seemed to point her only onward. 

Armin came to the apartment; she typed in the code for the street door and climbed the stairs. When she arrived at Levi’s door, she knocked, and she waited for him to answer. Usually at this time Levi would be painting, but he was done with the portrait of Eren, so what would he be doing now? Cleaning? Watching anime? Doing handstand push-ups?

Levi answered the door, looking surprised to see Armin there. Behind him, the projector was on, with a paused shot of something definitely animated on the wall. There was the answer to how Levi was occupying his free time. 

“Hi,” Armin greeted, perhaps a little quieter than usual. She smiled, and after a moment, Levi smiled back. “Do you want to talk first? Or take my pictures?” 

Levi glanced at the time on his phone -- there was a while before he would lose the natural lighting he’d hoped for. Plenty of time. “Let’s talk. Once I finish this episode.” 


	53. We Are All Miracles, Wrapped Up in Chemicals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Answers to some questions. Resolutions to some disagreements. A couple cute moments. Photography. Astronomy. Can I make Armin and Levi talk about their feelings for 7k? Let’s see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few things before i get to the chapter itself, because i can’t pretend the US election doesn’t matter. 
> 
> i have let fear stand in my way many times but despite how it has broken me over and over, i have not let it stop me, and i will not do so now. 
> 
> maybe a fanfiction isn’t the most important thing to be worried about right now… but maybe for someone, it _is_ important. for me, _orange_ has been my baby for the past two and a half years, so it is important to me. i have grown immensely in its writing; i have watched others grow immensely around me, and that has fed it. i have heard from readers who have grown from it -- saying they’ve learned about themselves, learned how to treat others well, felt a connection to it, seen themselves in it where they perhaps rarely do anywhere else, said it’s the best book they’ve ever read (and i can’t pretend i don’t get a little teary-eyed remembering these things). so i know it is, in some way, important to you too. 
> 
> so i’m continuing it, somehow. i’m a writer; it’s my job to write, whether i’m getting paid for it or not, but more than that it is my _joy_ to write, because i have something i need to say and there’s someone out there who needs to hear it. 
> 
> please continue to be excellent to one another in this trying time. it’s the least we can do if we want to survive. spare whatever kindness you have to those who need it; you can expect it to be returned from the very same a hundredfold. if you care, show it. for the love of whatever shred of good might remain in at least part of humanity, _show it_. 
> 
> on another topic entirely: i noticed recently that i have comments from _literal months ago_ that i never read or replied to. kinda too late now to reply to some of them, but i have now read them and i want to give a big thanks for all your kind words! it really keeps me going -- i think it’s no coincidence i’ve been pulling teeth to write while i’ve been neglecting to read comments. 
> 
> warnings: hurt/comfort, mentions of transmisogyny
> 
> now that we have a full page dedicated to author notes, you can have the chapter.

“Let’s talk… once I finish this episode.” Levi’s cheeks colored, and Armin took a second look at the projection, wondering what it was that made him embarrassed enough to show it. 

“Is that Sailor Moon?” Armin asked, somewhat recognising the early-nineties style and the schoolgirl look from some of what she used to watch. 

“ _No_. Sailor Moon is a work of art. What I’m watching is pure self-indulgent _trash_.”

“Then why are you watching it?”

“Because I feel shitty and I ran out of things to clean, and this trash in particular consistently makes me feel better about my mistakes, because at least I didn’t make it.” 

Armin raised her eyebrows. “Thanks for being honest.”

Levi shrugged. He stepped aside to let Armin in and returned to the sofa. He pressed play on his laptop and arranged his limbs in a way that Armin thought couldn’t possibly be comfortable. 

Armin left him to the last few minutes of his show and, after taking her shoes off, dropped off her things by the door and went into the bedroom. She thought about what it was she actually wanted to talk to Levi about. It would probably be good to start with the thing from this morning, but it was too close to what she knew Levi didn’t want to talk about. Then again, digging up old arguments would just distract from what was current. Armin laid down on the bed and pressed her face into the pillow. 

Armin groaned, letting the pillow muffle her. She could -- _should_ have thought about this on the way over. 

Levi came into the bedroom, then. “Show’s over.” He came to the bed and sat down next to Armin. “Did you want to talk about today?” he asked. 

Armin rolled over and sat up. “I wanted to talk about a few things, but today is one of them. If you don’t want to --”

“I want to,” Levi said. He looked Armin in the eye, much more seriously than the way he’d stared at her the night before. “Do you?”

“No,” Armin admitted. “I’m used to letting my problems just sort of… fade. Ignoring them until they go away. I think you are too.”

“Yeah.”

“But we,” Armin paused, gesturing between the two of them meaningfully, “are not going to work out if we keep doing that.”

“Seems that way.” 

“I meant what I said earlier, though. I don’t want you to tell me anything you wouldn’t otherwise.” 

Levi broke eye contact. “I know. But I would tell you otherwise.” 

Armin’s heart sped up. She wasn’t _ready_ to hear this, but she had to be. She would never really be ready, she knew that much. 

“I know how it feels for people to make assumptions about how much of your life revolves around one thing. I mean, it’s not… it’s not really comparable, but whenever anyone finds out I used to do sex work, they think they know everything about me. It’s not the same as being trans, obviously. But I know the feeling.”

Armin blinked. “That’s all it was?” 

“Mm-hm. What did you think I was going to say?” 

Armin tilted her head to the side. “I thought you were going to come out to me.” 

Levi snorted half a laugh and topped it with half a smile. “What is there to come out about?” he asked, quietly, as if he was asking himself. 

“Levi…”

“I know. It’s just, it’s not really anything to me. I only haven’t wanted to tell you because I didn’t like you acting like it was important,” Levi said. 

Armin blinked, squinted. “Isn’t it?”

“ _No_ ,” Levi said. “Not to me.” 

Armin continued squinting. “I… I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make a bigger deal of it than you want, but I don’t get it.” 

Levi sighed. “I don’t think of myself as transgender. I never have, and I doubt I ever will. I feel a connection to trans people, but… It’s just not important enough to me to bother calling it anything.” 

“Oh,” Armin said. She sort of felt like a balloon a month after a birthday party, still sitting in the corner, lumpy and lopsided as its air had half escaped. 

“I don’t mean to say it shouldn’t be important to you, or that your gender isn’t important to me. It’s just, I never cared about my own.

“Think of it like this.” Levi spoke slowly, thinking as he went. “I put on gender like I put on pants in the morning. I’d be much more comfortable without, honestly; I like being naked. But everyone tells me I have to wear pants, and it’s indecent not to. And I wear pants, and not a skirt, only because it’s what I’m used to. Though I do like wearing skirts every once in a while. I don’t even take my pants off when I’m alone; I’ll get cold without them. I don’t care about my pants, though, as long as they’re clean.”

Armin looked lost, so Levi tried to clarify with less metaphors and more straight talk. “What I mean is, I really don’t care what gender people think I am, it’s just that they’ve always thought I was a man and so I did too and I told everyone that. But I also never felt out of place with women. I’ve seen myself in the place of women so many times. And then, if there was ever someone whose gender wasn’t clear, or something else, I could see myself in them too. I never _thought_ about it, really; not until I met you. And I still don’t know if I’m necessarily not a man, and I still don’t care.”

“I just don’t get how you can _not care_ about it,” Armin said. “Gender is so fucking complicated and _used_ and _enforced_ so atrociously, and knowing how I get affected by that, how any person with a complicated relationship to gender gets fucked over by it… I can’t imagine not caring about that.” 

“I do care about that. Politically, I’m _furious_ at the way gender is… built, and maintained, and weaponised. You and I could spend days talking non-stop about it, I’m sure. But personally, when it comes to my _own_ gender, I don’t want it to _mean_ anything. So much about me, everyone thinks it means something, and I don’t want it to. So just… think of me as a man, if you want to. Think of me as a woman, if it makes you feel better. Think of me as non-binary, if it suits me. Or don’t think I have a gender at all; maybe that’s the closest to the truth. I really don’t care.” 

Armin looked… sad, honestly, and she felt bad for being sad, which only made it worse. 

“Not what you wanted to hear, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” Armin said. This wasn’t either of the things she expected him to say, and Armin was wholly unprepared for the truth. Levi was neither the man she had thus far assumed he was, nor the decidedly trans person she thought she might be able to relate to. He didn’t care, and if anything, that made it harder for Armin to decide how she was going to move forward. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, not sure what she was apologising for this time. 

Levi shrugged. “No need. I told you: I don’t care.”

“Okay.” 

“Out of curiosity… what did you want to hear?” 

“I don’t know.” Armin shook her head. “I sort of thought, well, either you’re a man, and I’ll be able to keep feeling just the way I do about you, or you’re not a man, and either I have to rethink whether I’m actually straight, or end us… but I get to have a person I’m really close to who’s trans, like I am. And I guess, I kind of don’t have either now. So I’m lost.” 

“I wouldn’t say you don’t have either,” Levi said. “Like I said, you can think of me how you want. If you think of me as trans, I won’t stop you. If you think of me as a man, again, I won’t stop you. If you love me --” _Oh my god I said that word_ , Levi thought, but masked well the little choking fit he had when he paused to breathe, “-- and you’re straight, then that’s what you are, and if you think of me as some sort of… trans senpai, I don’t know, then sure.” Levi shook his head, not like he was denying it but more like he was questioning it. “If that’s how you want to think about me, I guess I might think it’s a little misguided, but it’s up to you, really. I won’t correct you; I have nothing to correct. So I think it’s less like you have neither and more like you have both.” 

Armin looked up at him, her head still tilted down, her brows drawn together. “I just don’t want to be… dismissive.”

“That’s the thing… there’s nothing to dismiss. If there is, and I’m not seeing it, then I’d rather you be dismissive.”

“I can try,” Armin said, and she _would_ try, as much as it clashed with how she felt about herself. It was a way of feeling about gender that Armin had never considered before. 

“So, about this morning?”

Armin nodded. “Yeah. We both ended up really hurt by that. I think we do that a lot; get into little arguments that hurt us both and never fully resolve it.”

“That’s for sure,” Levi said. 

“And I feel kind of selfish, because usually it’s something I assume I’m more hurt by. Or, in the moment, I think I have more of a right to be hurt. And I don’t think I do now but, whether I do or not, it’s no reason for me to ignore how you’re feeling.” 

“I don’t think it’s selfish. I usually leave it be because I think you do have more of a right than I do to be hurt and I assume you’ll bring it up when you’re ready.” 

“And I never do, until it’s too much,” Armin said. Even now, it was only after Eren’s unexpected and even unintended help that she realised she needed to address her habit of fighting with Levi and not resolving it, before it soured their relationship. “I think we both deserve better.” 

Levi nodded in agreement. “So, how can I make what happened today better?”

Armin shook her head. “It’s not just about what you can do. We both need to do better.” 

“It was my assumptions that caused it, though. I know I need to do a lot better when it comes to respecting you. And it’s also my responsibility to make it not _your_ problem that _I_ can’t get things right.” 

“At the same time, not talking to me about it means there are going to be some things you don’t notice. Like with this morning. If you’ve been thinking this whole time that I’m obsessed with sex, just because I enjoy it, you could have said something before. We could have talked about that, and the whole thing where most people think of trans women as, basically, jokes and fucktoys.” 

“I didn’t know that’s what I was thinking, though. What do I do in a situation like that?” 

Armin felt like she was admitting defeat when she said, “I don’t know.”

“Would I have hurt you any less if I’d said it earlier?” Levi honestly wanted to know, because if it would help her to spew every thought he had, he would do it. 

“No.”

“I know I have to do better,” Levi said. “And I will. But if you want to take responsibility for something too… If you’re the one avoiding a subject, it’s not fair to blame me for not knowing. And you’ve been avoiding talking about a lot of things. One of them is, you don’t ask what I think of you being trans. I know you’ve talked to Eren about it.” 

Armin had, more than once. In the context of her own feeling like shit when someone misgendered her, or she expected someone would, or her own hangups about her body, and how all of that affected their relationship… it was mostly about Armin’s insecurities, but Eren wasn’t one to hold back what he thought either. She hadn’t gone through that with Levi, at least not to the same extent. 

“I know you don’t want everything to be about you being trans,” Levi said. He seemed sort of quietly annoyed, or at least, more openly displeased than he usually was. “But I still want to know what bothers you, whether it’s about this or anything else. I can find out on my own how to treat trans people as a group; I don’t know how to treat _you_ unless you tell me. And I want to know.”

“You could ask,” Armin said, defensively, because she felt like she was being lectured and she _seriously_ did not like being lectured by her boyfriend, no matter how much older than her he was. The age difference may have, in fact, made it _more_ annoying. 

“I could. And I will, if you want me to.” 

“Okay. I… I guess I do. I can’t promise I won’t get angry, though.” Armin noticed it always bothered Levi whenever she got angry at him. It was because he was distressed that he hurt her, usually, or it had to do with some sort of conflict of values, but it still made her feel like she was wrong to be angry at him. 

“You don’t have to promise that.” Levi said, close to shouting. “Get angry, for god’s sake; at least you’ll be talking to me.” 

Armin and Levi stared at one another for a moment, in silence. 

“Sorry,” Levi said. “I shouldn’t have yelled.” 

“Have I really been avoiding talking to you that much?” Armin asked. “Enough that you want me to get angry at you.” 

“Not exactly,” Levi said. “You haven’t been avoiding me completely; we live together, after all. You talk to me plenty. You’ve just been avoiding talking to me about what’s bothering you, and if you getting angry makes you tell me how you feel, then do it. I can handle it, trust me.” 

“Okay.” 

“Are you going to get angry?”

“Not now. Probably.” Armin tended to only be angry at the moment whatever problem happened, so she doubted she would get truly angry now unless something new came up. 

“All right. Did we… resolve this thing?” 

Armin thought about it. As for Levi unlearning transmisogyny, it wasn’t something that could just resolve itself in a day, but at least they had a plan for how to work on it. That seemed like a resolution, as long as they actually followed it through. “I guess so. Do you feel like it’s resolved?”

Levi nodded. “For now. If you think so, then I’m good with it.” All he wanted out of this conversation was to know Armin would, eventually, open up to him a little more. He remembered telling her once that he wasn’t endless, he wasn’t as interesting as her, he didn’t have a million things to say about himself, and yet he was pretty sure she knew him better than he knew her. Levi knew her, definitely, enough to love her, but not enough to be satisfied. 

One thing still concerned Levi. “Do you still want me to paint you?”

“Of course,” Armin said. 

“You still trust me enough for that?”

“I think so.” Armin looked toward the door; behind it was a room full of Levi’s paintings, those which still remained in his possession after years of painting genitals, up close and personal. From what Armin knew, he’d been respectful to each model who sat for him; from what she could tell of his new series, he still was. 

Hell, she’d already come home today expecting Levi to take her pictures for the painting. Armin knew she wanted to do it. 

“I guess I wonder though,” Armin said. “Why are you so against me doing it?”

“I’m not… against it. Not exactly. I just don’t know if I believe you’re really considering it clearly.” 

Armin grit her teeth. “This again?”

“We never fully dealt with this either.” 

“I know. But I’m not changing my mind.”

“You made this decision at a very vulnerable time. You’d just had the thing happen at your dorm.”

“And I’ve thought about it a lot since then. I still want to do it.” Armin looked back at Levi, trying to express how much she meant this. “Listen. I hate -- _hate_ \-- the preoccupation with trans people’s genitals. I really fucking do.”

“So do I,” Levi said. 

Armin nodded once, showing she approved of his interjection. “But I also believe I’m more than my penis, and I believe you can and do show that through your work. So I want you to paint me, and I want you to put everything you know about me into that painting.” 

“People will still see what they want.”

“Then prove them wrong.” Armin looked fearless, passionate, calculating -- a lioness about to pounce. She spoke through gritted teeth, imploring Levi to do his very best. 

Levi jerked a bit, his eyebrows raising in surprise. “Is that a challenge?” 

“If I need to make it one, I will.” 

“I already said I’d do it, but now I really want to. Just to prove myself to you.” Levi looked up at the ceiling. “Fucking… I haven’t cared to prove myself to anyone but me since I graduated college.” 

“Do you want me to give you a grade?” The corner of Armin’s mouth lifted, and her eyes softened just a bit. 

“God no. I’m the teacher now; I give the grades.” 

It was a good sign that Armin and Levi were starting to be playful with each other again, but Armin wasn’t satisfied yet. “So you’ll take my photos today?” 

“Yes. I’ll stop stalling. Once we finish talking, I’ll do it.” 

Armin believed him. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand behind Levi; still plenty of time. She hadn’t been here even a half hour yet. 

“So,” Levi began, drawing the word out. “Money.” 

Armin frowned. It was a very intense frown, quite a dramatic change from the lighthearted joking they’d just managed to get to. 

“You’re not satisfied with the compromise we made, either.” 

“No.” Armin hadn’t even been satisfied when she suggested it. Sure, it was a decent enough compromise, for Levi to ask Armin for permission before he shelled out money for her, but it wasn’t what she wanted. “I honestly wish you would stop paying for my things. You might not know this, but Wall just handed me and Eren enough money to cover half a semester of room and board as an apology for not being able to replace our window. Grandpa insisted I keep it when I offered it to him. So, with that on top of our jobs, we have a little money to burn right now. It may not compare to what you have, but, at least for me, there’s a certain amount of pride I’d like to keep by supporting myself when I can.” 

“I understand how you feel,” Levi said. “I mean, I’m not going to lie; I think it’s misguided, and that’s after thinking exactly the same as you for years.” Levi could well remember all the years he insisted on paying part of Erwin and Hanji’s rent, refusing to take anything better than the couch to sleep on because he wasn’t contributing as much, and always chipping in for at least a third of their groceries, even if he didn’t eat as much as they did. All of this he paid on the inconsistent income of a part-time full service sex worker, seasonal sugar baby, and full time unsuccessful artist, the latter with an annual salary of exactly zero dollars and zero cents. And, looking back, he knew he’d have an easier time in those years if he’d taken Erwin’s offer of gross rich people money buying him a somewhat comfortable life while he built up his fame, but he also remembered his own pride. He remembered wanting to be able to do everything himself, because it made him feel trapped if he took anything from anyone else. “Does this mean you don’t want me to even ask anymore?”

“I’d prefer it. I mean, if you take me on a date, and _you_ invited me, sure. Pay if it makes you feel better. But I’ll do the same if I invite you. Other than that, just, let me take care of myself. I’m already living in your house for free.” 

“It might take us a little while to sort it out. Can I keep asking until I’m sure I know the pattern?” 

“Okay, if you need to.” 

“I’m sure you’ll turn me down every time.”

“Probably.” 

“Then, how about this: let me give you gifts.” Levi hadn’t brought it up at all since the last time they’d talked about this, because he knew Armin wouldn’t like it. But he really did want to shower her (and Eren) in gifts and he hoped maybe she would be more open to it if she could find her dignity in a more regular support of her own self. “Not the necessities. Just frivolous things you wouldn’t get yourself anyway.” 

“What do you mean by _gifts_?” Armin asked. She’d already told Levi, she didn’t want a vagina, so if he was going to try and arrange that for her…

“Clothes. Jewellery. Books. Maybe a vacation or two.” Levi leaned back against the headboard and crossed his arms. He had a _much_ longer list than that, and he was certain Armin knew it. 

Armin pursed her lips. It did sound nice, in a way. At the same time, she really didn’t like the idea of feeling indebted to Levi. 

Levi seemed to read her mind. “I don’t expect anything in return but seeing your eyes light up when I find something you love.”

Armin smiled, just a little. “You mean that?” 

“Of course. Don’t you know that’s why people get gifts for each other?” 

“...No diamonds,” Armin said. “The mining practices are really horrible.”

“Of course.” 

“Then… okay.” 

“Great.” Levi got up from the bed and went to his dresser, digging in the top drawer for a moment. He tossed a small box over to Armin. “I was going to wait for your birthday, but now I don’t have to.”

Armin opened the box, forcing down her urge to shriek. This felt _way_ too much like the kind of thing she would expect Levi to do to _propose_ , complete with the tiny jewellery box, and she was not at all ready for that sort of thing. 

Inside the box was a necklace; a thin chain, probably white gold if Armin was right, and strung onto it was a tiny anchor-shaped pendant with yellow and light blue stones set into it. There was no mark of a brand anywhere on the box, only a little pair of initials and a tinier ‘18’ pressed into the back of the pendant, which Armin assumed meant it was probably handcrafted by some independent jeweller. The possibilities of its uniqueness were limited; it could be a common piece from that jeweller, but even so there could only be so many. It could be one-of-a-kind, something Levi had found by accident and thought it would be perfect for her. 

“I thought topaz suited you better anyway,” Levi said, shuffling his feet. 

Or it could have been designed by Levi, and Armin had a feeling it was. “It’s beautiful.”

“I wanted to get you something that had to do with the ocean,” Levi started to explain, sitting back down on the edge of the bed nearest Armin. “I was gonna do a fish, but I thought you’d prefer something small and at this size you wouldn’t really be able to tell what kind of fish it was. I thought that would be important to you. So then I changed my mind; maybe an anchor would be more recognisable.” 

“Levi…” Oh god, _he totally designed it_. Armin swore she was about to combust. 

“And I noticed later on that the anchor kind of looks like that trans symbol, where those circle-line gender symbols are overlapped. So if you want it to have to do with that too, it does.” 

“Levi, I’m gonna smack you.”

“Um. Okay.” 

“I love it.” Armin practically fell on Levi trying to hug him, snapping the box shut in her fist. “You fucking dick. I can’t believe you did this for me. Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” Levi said. He hugged Armin back, nice and tight. 

“How am I supposed to top this for your birthday?” Armin whined. 

Levi rubbed his face against Armin’s hair and his voice came out in a whisper. “This isn’t your birthday present anymore. And you don’t ever need to try and ‘top’ my gifts.”

“But you went through all this trouble…” 

“It wasn’t as much trouble as you think,” Levi assured her. His arms tightened even more around Armin, and she made a small, content noise. 

“I was thinking,” Armin said slowly, not wanting to ruin the moment. “Eren is kind of what holds us together. We wouldn’t have this without him, you know? But you do all these unexpected, really sweet romantic things -- even if you’re a _fucker_ sometimes when you do them -- and I think, wow, we’re really something too.”

“Well, I’d hope so. I _do_... you know.” Levi didn’t finish the sentence; he didn’t need to. 

“I know. Me too.”

“I know what you mean, though. Sometimes I wonder what we would be like if he decided not to date us anymore. But I think, somehow, we could find a way to make it work.” 

“Besides, neither of us would have what we do with Eren without the other, right?” 

“That’s… true,” Levi said. “I never thought of it like that.” 

“Though I think we would still feel a little incomplete without Eren. I think any of us missing would feel wrong at this point.” 

“Mm. We’ll just hope we all stay together, then? More than hope; we’ll have to keep working on it.” 

“I’m prepared for that.” 

“Good. Me too.” 

Armin and Levi cuddled for a while longer, reclining on the bed, almost sleepy after expending so much emotional energy on their conversation. Enjoying one another’s presence in such a peaceful moment was something they didn’t often get to do. But eventually, Levi glanced at the clock with a groan. 

“It’s four,” Levi said, clearly annoyed about it. “You’ll have to go in an hour.”

Armin nodded to acknowledge him but didn’t say anything. 

“We should go do the pictures.”

“Oh. Right.” Armin shifted so she could look at Levi’s face. “Now?” 

“Yeah. It’ll take some time.” 

“Okay.” Armin moved away from Levi, groaning as she did so. “I don’t wanna move. For, like, a lot of reasons.”

“I’ll carry you, then.” 

Armin made a questioning noise, then shrieked when Levi came around to her side of the bed and scooped her up, lifting from under her back and knees. She held tight to his shirt until he had her settled comfortably in his arms. 

“You okay?” 

“Mm-hm.” Armin nodded quickly, still wary of being held like this, though it wasn’t the first time. 

Levi carried her through the apartment -- out the bedroom door, down the hall, and into the mostly empty second bedroom. Armin had only been in here a couple times, always to borrow some article of clothing from Levi. It wasn’t like he used it for much else; only the closet had anything in it, and otherwise he just used the room recently for photography. He set Armin down gently on the floor, his hands immediately moving to take off her sweater. 

Armin chuckled quietly and let Levi undress her; he was being sweet about it anyway, kissing her nose and cheeks while he unbuttoned her shirt and pushed it off her shoulders. “Levi…”

“Yes, _darling_?”

Armin blushed and laughed a little louder. “I can undress myself, thanks.” 

“Alright.” Levi moved away from her and took his phone out, making sure there was enough free storage space for this, while Armin got the rest of her clothes off and put them aside. 

“Do you know what a closed pose is?” Levi asked. 

“Um. Not really,” Armin answered. 

“Okay. Basically, I want you to pose in a way that you would be comfortable sitting like that for half an hour or so without moving. A closed pose means parts of you are overlapping,” Levi explained. “It makes a more interesting composition than an open pose, which would be without overlap -- kind of a Vitruvian Man situation.” 

“Just one pose then?” Armin asked. 

“You can do more than one if you want. It’s up to you.” 

Armin leaned back on her hands, then pulled her knees up, crossing one leg over the other. “How’s this?”

Levi gave her the barest hint of a smirk. “A classic. But are you comfortable like that?” 

“I guess so.” 

Levi started taking pictures. “Keep looking at me,” he said, moving slowly in a circle around Armin. 

“What are you doing?” Armin asked. 

“Getting different angles.” He made it about halfway around her before Armin shifted slightly. “Something wrong?”

“My, uh, wrists hurt.” 

“Already?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Okay. Switch poses.” Levi deleted the photos he’d already taken; he had a feeling she wouldn’t end up being comfortable like this anyway. “How do you usually sit?” he asked. 

“Um, I guess, like this?” Armin picked her hands off the floor and hooked her left arm around her knee, letting the other leg stretch out in front of her. “I mean, I’m usually in a chair, or on my bed, but this is how I sit when I study. Sometimes for hours.” 

“That’s probably good then. If you think this suits you.”

“Yeah. Go for it.” 

Levi began circling around Armin again, taking photos from every angle that she could turn her head and look at him. He couldn’t help but compare Armin’s facial expression to Eren’s and Hanji’s. Hanji had stared with an almost playful look -- it suited them, and was an expression they wore often. Eren had been relaxed, more than anything, and looked comfortable in being himself. It was a state of being that Levi knew had taken Eren a long time to achieve, and it wasn’t without a crack or two in its foundation. 

Armin’s gaze had two main elements, neither of which were found in either of the other photo sessions. She didn’t smile; instead she met the camera with what at first glance might seem like an impassive expression. But beneath that lived both a hopeful (but not naive) innocence, and a calculating challenge. It was perfect for Armin; Levi couldn’t have picked anything that suited here more, not matter how much he might want to see her smile. 

Yet, despite her almost-frown, Armin didn’t look sad. Not at all. She looked… _proud_. She looked like a young queen, even as she sat naked, bare of any silks or jewels adorning her person. 

Levi felt a chill run down his spine. Despite that the look suited her, it was one he’d never really seen before. It… intimidated him, and he didn’t know he could feel this intimidated by Armin. 

He loved it. 

Finished taking pictures, he knelt down next to Armin and started flipping through them. She was silent for a while, then spoke up: 

“What are you doing?” Armin asked. 

“Showing you the options.”

Armin looked at him, her eyes clearly conveying _what the fuck are you talking about?_

“I picked the angle together with Eren and Hanji,” Levi explained. 

Armin sighed. She swiped at Levi’s phone until she found the photo she was looking for. Levi had taken it while on one knee, the camera level with Armin’s eyes; he was positioned in front of her, a bit to the right. 

“Are you sure?” Levi asked. 

“If you want these paintings to have consistency between them, this is it,” Armin said. “Full frontal.”

Levi stared at the photo. It _was_ a full frontal, or as close as he could get out of this pose. The right half of Armin’s torso was visible, flat all the way down until the space between her legs, which was less flat. 

“This is what I signed up for.”

“You’re sure?”

“I told you,” Armin said. “I don’t want a vagina. And I want people to see me as I am.” 

“Okay.” Levi stood and moved back into position. “Once the shoot is over, you can’t change your mind,” he reminded her.

“I’m not going to.” 

“All right. Say cheese.” 

Armin did not say cheese; instead she stared at Levi, with that hope, that challenge, back in her eyes. He shivered, and then he took the rest of the photos he needed. 

After he was done, Levi extended a hand to Armin to help her stand. He handed her clothes over. While she dressed, Levi flipped through the photos he had just taken. 

Dressed, Armin stepped into Levi’s space; she wrapped her hand around his wrist, catching his attention away from the phone. Levi locked it by habit and met Armin’s eyes; she leaned in and kissed him, her eyes slipping closed. 

Armin pulled back before Levi even fully noticed she was there, and when she leaned her head down he opened his arms to hold her close. 

“What’s this for?” Levi whispered. 

Armin breathed out slowly against his neck. “It is nerve-wracking, even if I want to do this. But I know I’m making the right choice for me.” 

Levi smoothed his hand over Armin’s hair, not knowing how to respond. He wished he could understand how Armin could care so much about how people saw her, and still put herself out there in a context where she knew people would misinterpret her, maybe even hurt her. 

Than again, didn’t Levi do the same thing? He hated when people assumed he was all sex and perfectionism, and yet his paintings showed exactly that, and he kept making them, hoping someday someone would see more in them than that, even as he spoke about them in that very context. Armin, at least, said plainly that she was putting out a challenge. 

“You’re so much stronger than I am,” Levi said. Armin twitched in his arms, shocked he would say such a thing. “I mean it. You are. I admire you for it.” 

“I don’t think I’m that strong.” 

“You are.” Levi pulled back enough to look in her eyes; he brushed a bit of Armin’s hair back from her face. “My god, do I love you for it.” 

Armin felt her breath stutter, and Levi’s did the same. “Levi?”

“I know; we weren’t saying it. We didn’t need to. But I still wanted to. At least this once.”

“I love you too,” Armin admitted aloud, and her voice was tight on empty lungs. 

“You don’t have to say it.”

“I wanted to,” she said, mimicking him. Armin smiled. “At least this once.” 

“Can I kiss you?” Levi asked. 

“Of course. You don’t need to ask.”

“I wanted to.”

“At least this once?”

Levi snorted out his nose, then pressed lightly smiling lips against Armin’s. 

“Will you take me to work?” Armin asked. Levi’s arms were still around her waist, his fingers lightly pressing into her spine. “On your bike.”

“You sure?” 

“Yeah. I really want to be close to you right now.” 

“I’m glad.” Levi kept one arm around her as he maneuvered Armin out of the room and back up the hall. “I was… honestly a little worried you wouldn’t want this anymore.” 

“Why?”

“I guess I sort of came out to you. I wasn’t sure how you would take it.” 

Armin leaned into him. “I wasn’t sure either. But, how I feel about you hasn’t changed. That’s all I need to know right now.” 

Levi helped Armin into a jacket and helmet in front of the door. “Thank you. Maybe this sounds kind of incompatible with my, you know, not caring, but it means a lot to me.”

“Of course. It means a lot that you shared it with me.” 

“I gotta tell Eren now,” Levi realised. He paused partway through putting his white leather jacket on. (And yes, the jacket made him look like a douche. He didn’t care.) “How do you think he’ll react?”

“About the same way he did with me probably. He’ll definitely hug you.” 

“Of course he will.” Levi got his own helmet on and picked up his keys. “You have everything you need?” 

Armin picked up her bag from where it sat by the door. “Yup. Let’s go.”

Levi led the way down the stairs and out the back door to the covered parking. He and Armin pulled the protective cover off of his motorcycle, and Levi folded it and put it and Armin’s bag into the small trunk space. He got on, and waited for Armin to get on behind him and wrap her arms securely around his waist, before he backed out of his parking spot and headed slowly toward the road. 

Before Levi joined traffic, Armin spoke in her outside-but-not-shouting voice: “I still have a while before I start. About forty-five minutes. Do you want to drive around a little first?” 

“Sure.” 

Levi took Main Street out past the bridge, towards the edge of town where shops turned to residential streets turned to organic farms. It wasn’t exactly rural; there wasn’t enough space between towns around here for the suburbs to fully end. Little neighborhoods sprang up in pockets here and there, and technically the two-lane road they sped down, bracketed on either side by overhanging trees, was part of a major highway. Still, the trees, some still flowering and some already sprouting leaves, were beautiful in the afternoon light. 

When he reached the place where the valley began to slope up into the base of a mountain line, Levi stopped and turned off the engine. He looked up. It wasn’t a particularly steep or high area of the mountain range here; while it was rather well-known because of a nearby college named after it, it was among the shortest of the notable mountains in the area. Still, the summit was visible from Wall, so it wasn’t too far out. He took his phone out from the inside pocket of his jacket and checked the time; still a half hour left. 

“Why are we stopped?” Armin asked. 

Levi shrugged. “Felt like it. Want to go back?”

“I don’t mind. It’s pretty here.” Armin got off the bike and removed her helmet, shaking out her hair. “Kind of wish we had the time to go to the top. The view must be wonderful, it’s so green around here...”

“It is but… It’s best at night, honestly.” Levi remembered the time he tried out an introductory astronomy class, just for fun, and fell in love with it. They’d taken two trips to a clearing on top of the mountain for telescope observations of dim objects, which were completely washed out by city lights on the roof of the science building where they usually did their observing. If one stayed long enough to let their eyes adjust, they could see distinctly the center line of the Milky Way stretch across the sky. 

“Maybe we could come back sometime when I don’t have class,” Armin suggested. 

“Yeah.” He looked to Armin and tried to imagine her illuminated by the moon and stars, staring up at them in wonder, and then Eren, the same. “Definitely.” 

“You’re thinking something sweet, aren’t you?” 

“Might be.”

Armin tugged Levi close by the collar of his jacket. She flipped up the visor on his helmet and, somewhat awkwardly maneuvering around the helmet’s open space, planted a messy kiss on his lips.

“I only said maybe,” Levi grumbled, as if he had a problem with the sudden kiss. 

“But you meant yes. I could tell.” 

“You couldn’t even see my face,” Levi said. 

“I could still tell,” Armin assured him. “I’m really glad we talked. I missed doing stuff like this with you, and now it’s comfortable again.” 

“I’ll make sure to keep talking to you then.”

Armin laughed. “You better! I will too.” She looked back down the road; some trees released petals to swirl in the wind a bit before dusting to the ground. Wha fell on the road collected mostly in the shoulder, blown aside by passing cars. Leaves rustled and the soft sunlight peeked through, shadows catching on everything. “You really think it’s better than this at night?” 

“For me, it is. I love seeing the stars.” 

Armin turned back to Levi. “That seems so you.”

Levi shrugged. “I couldn’t see a damn thing in the city. Central Park had beautiful trees, if I could get there, but most of the stars, except the very brightest, were totally washed out. It was only when I came out here that I started to notice them.”

“So stars are kind of your personal freedom thing, then?” 

“You could put it that way, if you wanted.” 

“I’d love to go stargazing with you. I think Eren would too.” Armin turned her attention to the top of the mountain. “I heard there’s some kind of self-sustaining facility the college owns up there.” 

“Yeah, the field house. It’s new, just from the last few years. I think students and classes can reserve it.” 

“Maybe I’ll look into it,” Armin suggested. “It might be nice to stay there for a night or something. Though I don’t know if we’ll have much time, since finals are coming and all, and your siblings too.” 

“Are you going home right when classes end?” Levi asked. 

“I was planning to. Shit, we haven’t bought train tickets!” Armin realised. 

Levi nearly offered to pay for them, but thought better of it. “Stay with me for a bit,” he said instead. “You can keep the rest of your stuff in my spare room. We should still be able to use the field house during the summer. And maybe you can watch graduation; don’t you have a few senior friends?”

“No, but I think Annie is graduating early. I’ll talk it over with Eren. I don’t think he would go home if I wasn’t going, anyway -- but I do want to go.”

“You miss your grandpa?”

“Of course,” Armin said. “I always miss him.” 

“Bring him here.”

Armin burst out laughing.

“I’m serious.” 

“I know you are, that’s why it’s so funny!” Armin shook her head and picked her helmet up. “No, I really do want to go home. But I’ll think about staying back for a while after classes end.” She put her helmet back on and got on the bike behind Levi, holding him tight around the middle. “Let’s get going. I don’t wanna be late.” 

Levi flipped his visor down. “As you wish, darling.” 

Armin snorted, and let her laughter ring out loud as Levi raced back toward town. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from [wonderful](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a28s_wyqkyc) by gary go, which came up on my spotify discover playlist while i was writing this. give it a listen.


	54. Victory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [The title doesn’t have to do with anything in here.] Fruit, fucks, fluff, food, and friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know what the title is about, right? yeah. fucking *clenches fist* ice gays. i love referencing things that have nothing to do with this fic. 
> 
> warnings: the succ, boobs, mentions of Unsanitary Things and rehab, discussion of BDSM-related activities, edited after midnight

Armin returned from her evening class to Levi’s apartment door left unlocked for her. The first thing she saw when she came in was Eren and Levi at the kitchen table, feeding each other cut-up fruit with their hands. Eren had his lips around Levi’s thumb and index finger, suckling lightly. 

“Um. Am I interrupting something?” Armin asked. 

“Not really. I told him a long time ago that I wanted him to lick honey off my fingers, and I just remembered, so I’m making good on that.” Levi pulled his fingers from Eren’s mouth and reached for another piece of honey-drizzled apple. 

Armin sat down at one of the empty chairs, to Levi’s right, and watched them go at it. “You know what would make this better?” 

“What?”

Armin tapped her lips and leaned forward. Levi redirected the apple slice towards her, and she bit down on the tip, then pulled it out of his fingers. She leaned in close until she was just inches from Levi’s face; he rolled his eyes, but bit the other half and pressed his lips against Armin’s anyway. 

“Aww!” Eren gushed. He sprawled out across the table, grinning at the pair with their lips currently locked, kissing less awkwardly than expected around half-chewed apple. 

Armin turned away first, her hand coming up quick to cover her mouth while she blushed and swallowed. “Your lips are really soft today,” she observed quietly. 

“It’s the honey, I think,” Levi said. 

Armin leaned in and kissed him again, this time with a little more pressure, her hands on either side of his face. 

Levi pulled her in with hands on her hips until she was pretty much in his lap; Armin smiled against him, and leaned her head a bit to the side to slot their lips together. 

Armin moved her lips in little twitches, feeling Levi’s relax slowly, until she could suck his bottom lip into her mouth. She scraped her teeth lightly against the skin, and Levi let her know he liked it with a quiet hum and his hands squeezing slightly at her hips. She released him, and with one hand braced against the chair, Armin ran her fingers over the short hair at the back of Levi’s neck. He’d buzzed his undercut down recently, leaving him with only his inch of hair on the top of his head, and it felt nice when Armin stroked against the grain and pressed her fingers into the tense spot at the base of his skull. 

Levi licked at Armin’s lips just as she parted them, and she laughed before their tongues met, just brushing together and then pulling back. Armin ended the kiss, the tiniest smack sounding as their wet lips came apart. 

Eren made a quiet, sort of strangled noise. “I think I get it now.”

“Get what?” Armin asked, still looking at Levi. His lips were swollen and pick, pretty and shiny. She pecked at them with another short kiss. 

“Why some guys get turned on watching girls kiss each other.” 

Levi looked away, toward the counter behind his chair, as if there was something immensely interesting on its bare white surface. 

“Oh, you told him?” Armin asked of Levi. He nodded, and she craned her neck to see Levi’s face. “...You’re smiling.” 

Levi grunted. 

“You’re really smiling!” Armin’s whole face lit up with glee. 

Levi leaned forward and thunked his head against Armin’s shoulder. “I said I don’t care what I am, not that I don’t like it when someone surprises me.” 

“Looks like you do like it,” Eren said. 

“You’re not just saying what you said because of what I told you, are you?” Levi asked. 

“No!” Eren said. “I dunno what it was, it just seemed like you were kind of… I don’t know.” Eren squinted, trying to find words. “I can’t really explain it, I just had this feeling like you were more of a woman in the moment? Maybe I’m just making shit up.” 

Levi shrugged; he picked his head up from Armin’s shoulder and started playing with her hair. “I wasn’t really thinking about it.” 

Eren smiled with crinkly eyes at him. “Either way, I kind of feel like a gross frat boy right now for thinking ‘oh hey, girls kissing, dick up’ so I’m gonna stuff these apples in my mouth right now.” 

As he did that, Armin and Levi’s eyes met. Armin leaned in to whisper in Levi’s ear, and giggled when he nodded. She slipped out of his lap and around the table, and dragged Eren’s chair back. 

“What are you--?” Eren started, and then shut up when Armin dropped down to her knees in front of him. 

“How about instead, I stuff you in my mouth?” Armin suggested. 

Levi smacked his forehead. “That was _bad_.”

Armin pouted. “Like you had better starters when you were my age.”

Levi pouted twice as hard. He also got up, and started coming around the table. “I did. Usually along the lines of ‘fuck my face’ or ‘I bet you’re big; wonder if you’ll fit in my mouth.’” 

“Those are _better_?” Armin asked. She unzipped Eren’s pants. 

Levi knelt on the floor next to Armin and helped her tug down Eren’s pants; Eren, with his mind going slightly hazy, lifted his hips a little shakily and let them strip him. He didn’t think about how Levi would probably make him clean the chair later, since his bare ass was now on it; his only only thoughts were of Armin’s hand coming around his cock and Levi spreading his legs while the two continued to argue. 

“I didn’t compare people’s dicks to food,” Levi said. 

Armin’s thumb passed over the head of Eren’s semi-hard cock, then pulled back his foreskin to play with it a bit. “Oh, please, don’t tell me you never made that comparison.”

“At your age? No.” Levi’s fingers tickled under Eren’s balls; Eren groaned aloud and squirmed. “A few years later, when I was whoring? Yes.”

“Why does being a whore make a difference?” Armin asked. 

“Don’t say that. I get to call me a whore; you don’t.” 

“Why not?” Armin and Levi leaned their faces in towards Eren’s cock at the same time; Armin took the head in her mouth, and Levi watched her while he answered her. (Eren, in the background, whined.)

“‘Whore’ is derogatory and used to shame sex workers. If I want to say it about myself, having been a sex worker, I can; you haven’t been there, so don’t.”

“Mmh,” Armin hummed, then let Eren’s dick pop out of her mouth. “Got it. So why does sex work make your come-ons different?” 

“Some guys expected me to be gross with them, so I was. Some people would just fuck off when clients were shitty to them, but I didn’t give a shit as long as they paid me.” Levi’s mouth replaced Armin’s, and he took Eren’s cock down to the root in one go, moaning around it nearly as loud as Eren did. He pulled back and sucked on the head for a bit while Armin licked the side and then turned to bite at Eren’s thigh. 

“F-fuck,” Eren hissed. “Are you two gonna argue the whole time you’re blowing me?” 

Armin and Levi both shrugged at the same time. “Maybe,” Armin said. 

Levi backed off for a moment. “Feels good having a cock in my mouth.” Immediately he went back in, swallowing Eren down like it was easy. 

“Let me get some too,” Armin whined. She pulled Levi up by the back of his shirt collar and licked what she could reach of Eren’s cock. Levi backed off and pressed his lips against the other side, and the two of them started to work Eren in unison. 

“Fuck. _Fuck_.” Eren groaned loudly, gripping the sides of his chair. “This is not at _all_ how I thought tonight would go,” he mumbled, then shuddered when he felt fingers massage behind his balls. “Oh, I’m gonna -- _shit_.”

“Do _not_ shit on me,” Levi ordered, as if that was what Eren meant.

“Ugh!” Eren smacked his hand into Levi’s forehead and pushed him away. “Gross!” 

Armin couldn’t help it; she laid her head against Eren’s leg and started to laugh uncontrollably. 

“It was so good and you ruined it,” Eren groaned. His fierce erection was already beginning to soften. 

Levi looked not the slightest bit sorry for prioritising a shit(ty) joke over Eren’s potential orgasm. 

“Fuck you, I’m going to take a shower.” Eren carefully got out of the chair, taking care not to knee Armin in the face. He waddled, half-hard and on his way to flaccidity, towards the bathroom. 

“Have fun in there,” Levi teased. 

“I will _not_.” 

“That was mean!” Armin said, smacking Levi lightly on the arm. She was still laughing. “He was already really close; you couldn’t restrain yourself for like, thirty more seconds?” 

“I didn’t realise he’d be that turned off by a shit joke,” Levi grumbled. “I thought he would be used to it by now.” 

Armin sighed, giving Levi a pitying look. “I’ll go nurse his wounded pride. You talk to him later.”

“Yeah, okay.” 

Armin followed Eren into the shower; he looked like a puppy left in the rain, wet and gloomy, staring down at his softened dick like it was a waterlogged chew toy. She resisted very carefully the urge to laugh at him. Armin really hoped a few days from now they could all look back on this and laugh, but for now, she put a comforting hand on Eren’s damp shoulder. 

“Hey. Are you okay?” Armin asked. 

“I’m fine,” Eren said. “Just a little miffed. That was kinda mean.”

“I don’t think Levi realised it would turn you off like that.”

“There are certain things I don’t really want to think about when I’m about to come. Poop is one of those things.” 

Armin let out the tiniest laugh and then smothered it. “I understand.” 

“You were perfectly happy to keep going though.”

“I wasn’t the one getting pleasured by two mouths; it didn’t really matter to me.”

“You laughed at me,” Eren said, drooping further. 

“I’m sorry. I was more laughing at the situation, but that was kinda mean of me.” 

Eren leaned close and squished his cheek against Armin’s. “It’s okay. I still love you.” 

“What about Levi?” 

Eren sighed. “I still love the buttface too.” 

“That’s not very nice,” Armin pointed out. 

Eren pouted, though Armin couldn’t see it. “Hmph.” 

While Eren and Armin bickered playfully in the shower, Levi cleaned up. He ate the last few apple slices, washed the plate, wiped down the table and chairs, took out the trash, and when he came back he sat in front of a big blank canvas, primed and dry, with Armin’s photos taped around the edges. 

When Eren first saw the photos, he’d called them _exciting, challenging, pointed_ \-- even wondered why Levi didn’t do any professional photography on the side. Armin hadn’t commented on any of it yet, not since the shoot; perhaps she hadn’t seen them, or she was too preoccupied with sucking half of Eren’s dick to form a comment. 

Levi… really liked the photos. He thought they were some of his best yet, and not just because Armin did such a fantastic job of modelling for him, though that definitely contributed. The late afternoon light quality was perfect for her, casting dramatic shadows across Armin’s body while also retaining the soft, sort of angelic look she tended to have in the light. But there was no halo to be seen, and it wouldn’t have worked with the image if there was. Armin was human, after all, and her calm indignance would be so out of place on an angel’s face. Armin actually seemed the least posed in the series so far, seated as she was in the way she did every day, her body naturally settling into its most comfortable shape; her arms and legs overlapping in front of her, back slightly hunched. And her eyes -- piercing, like lightning. 

Part of Levi wished he were a sculptor, so he could capture that moment in stone or wax, and all of the strength in Armin’s tense form, vulnerable pose be damned; could paint the surface in realism down to each individual freckle and vein, and have Armin’s presence challenge every person who walked in a room the same way her actual self had challenged him. He always felt that painting introduced a degree of separation, because the canvas prevented a viewer from interacting with the subject in physical space. That was always something he wanted, and something he exploited very consciously. Until now. Now he felt like something was lost, not having Armin herself in one’s life. 

If he didn’t already know he loved her, that thought might knock him off his feet. 

Levi wondered if something in his process of painting Eren would have changed had he known when he took the photos that he loved him, rather than just the cautious inkling that he might fall in love someday. 

Armin came out of the shower while Levi was still contemplating the photos and picking dried pats of acrylic paint off his plastic palette with his fingernails, letting the flecks drop to the concrete floor so he could sweep them up later. She wore one of Levi’s t-shirts, Eren’s tiger slippers, and a floor-length jersey skirt that was comfortable for around the house but a little too frumpy for outside. This Armin looked nothing like the one in the photos. Still, Levi was certain no-one could mistake that she was the same person. 

Armin slid her arms over Levi’s shoulders and hugged across his chest. She looked over his right shoulder. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Getting ready to paint?”

“Mhm. I’ll start Wednesday, I think. Tomorrow I have some student meetings, so I won’t have time.” 

Armin kissed Levi’s cheek. “I can’t wait to see it.” 

Levi turned around in her arms, swivelling his stool so he could face Armin. Their noses brushed together and his arms came around her waist, thumbs pressing firmly, but not painfully, into her hips. “Me too.”

The edges of Armin’s eyes crinkled when she smiled. 

“Kiss me?” Levi requested, and a moment later Armin’s lips were on his. 

One moment more, and Armin backed away. “I actually came out here to remind you to go talk to Eren.”

Levi grimaced. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”

“Hey, don’t make a face like that. You’re about to talk to someone you love.”

“I know. But I don’t want to apologise for my joke. Shit jokes are part of who I am.”

“Well,” Armin said, putting on her Lecture Voice, “you still gotta talk to him, and if you don’t want to apologise, you’ll have to find some other way to compromise.”

“Mmn, you’re right,” Levi murmured. He glanced at Armin once more before entering his bedroom. 

Eren sat on the bed in underwear and a t-shirt, towelling his hair off. “Hey,” he greeted, a little tight. 

“Hey.” 

“You here to apologise?” 

“I don’t really want to,” Levi admitted. 

“I know you don’t.” Eren sighed and wrung the towel in his hands. “I’m not really that mad. I mean, it was just an awkward comment during a blowjob.”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I had known it would bother you, though,” Levi said. “I won’t make shit jokes during sex again.” 

Eren smiled at him. “That counts as an apology.” He held out his arms, towel still hanging off of his right. “Hug?”

Levi walked into the hug and squeezed Eren tight around the middle, immediately relaxing into Eren’s usual extreme warmth. “I gotta say, it wasn’t something I thought about until now, but I am really glad you don’t have a shit kink.”

Eren was almost afraid to ask, but… “Have you slept with someone who did?”

“...Yeah. Not one of my favourite clients, but certainly one of the more memorable.” 

“Yikes.” 

“Hey, don’t judge.”

“I’m not judging! Much. I just don’t think I could handle being in that situa--”

“ _Shituation_ ,” Levi interrupted, nearly shouting. 

Eren groaned. “Was that necessary?” 

“Yes.” 

Armin poked her head in the door. “I heard moaning. You two aren’t fucking without me are you?”

“That wasn’t moaning,” Eren explained. “Levi made a pun.”

“Ah.” Armin came in fully and flopped down in the middle of the bed. She hooked her left arm around Eren’s waist and pulled a pillow close with her right. “If you two made up, Levi, go shower. It’s bed time.” 

Eren let go of Levi and leaned sideways to half-tackle Armin and pin her down to the bed. “Aww, are you sweepy?” he asked, while she shrieked. 

“Sweepy?” Armin repeated, a grin spreading across her face. 

“Ugh.” Eren smushed his face into the blanket. 

“Aww!” Armin giggled loudly, rubbing her cheek affectionately against Eren’s shoulder. Levi watched them with pure confusion written all over his face. “It’s his lisp!” Armin explained. “It’s so cute! He mostly got rid of it, but sometimes it comes back and I really like it.” 

Eren groaned, muffled, from his place digging a hole in the comforter with his nose.

Levi leaned over his boyfriend and ran his fingers through Eren’s hair, gently tugging until Eren turned his head enough to look at Levi with one eye. Levi leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to Eren’s cheek. “It is kind of cute. You’re cute.” 

Eren’s eyes widened for a moment, before he turned back into the pillow, mumbling something that might have been, “You’re cute, too.” 

When Levi started to sit up, Armin looked at him expectantly, waiting for her matching kiss. Levi felt one corner of his lips raising without his permission, and he leaned in to kiss her cheek; but Armin turned at the last second to catch him by the lips, and she held him in place with a hand quickly rested on the back of his neck until she was satisfied. 

After their kiss, Armin rolled over on top of Eren, making herself comfortable on his back and playing with his overgrown hair, whispering soft praises into his ear that she just _knew_ would make him melt. 

When Levi rejoined them after his shower, Eren and Armin were cuddling, face-to-face. Levi got in on Armin’s other side, in his usual spot, and kissed her shoulder before settling into his position tonight as the big spoon. 

\---

Levi slouched in his spinny office chair. The last student he’d met with that afternoon -- evening, really -- had just left, and he was alone in the quiet. He pressed his fingers into his temples, feeling the beginnings of a headache; he groaned as he stood to turn off the overhead fluorescent lights and switched the desk lamp on, then dropped heavily back into the chair. 

It would probably be best to move at this point, but he hadn’t cooled down from his run properly that morning and he was feeling incredibly sore. The meetings hadn’t helped. Despite turning down the light, Levi’s headache grew, and he grimaced as his aching limbs seemed to get all the more achey. 

He reached out towards the open laptop on his desk and hit the space bar to wake it; from his slouched position, he switched to the tab that was loaded to the next episode of the show he was rewatching, and started it. The anime was a mindless one, a slightly bisexual harem with political intrigue, excessive fanservice, and some supernatural elements -- demons and witches and sentient robots and one very lusty catboy. The animation was top-notch, but the story was _awful_ , and Levi fucking loved every second of the garbage show that even he could admit should have never left the proposal stage, much less gotten three lengthy seasons. It never failed to cheer him up, and he was pretty sure that was mostly a result of the fact that he’d watched it while going through rehab. It was his constant companion through psychological and physical withdrawals, distracting him from the pain and the urges. He supposed that should have made him never want to watch it again, but instead, Levi saw the anime as having helped him through one of the most difficult points in his life. 

So, Levi popped his headphones in (he’d been asked before to keep the volume down, after an episode with a particularly excessive amount of vaguely sexual high pitched shrieking) and enjoyed his shitty show. 

About halfway through the episode, his phone vibrated, sliding a few inches across the desk. Levi reached blindly for it, pausing the video, and saw Armin’s text message. 

_u done? we are heading over with hot cider_

It was a little surprising that the dining hall was serving hot cider in late April, but Levi supposed it was to placate the students ahead of the impending finals. 

Levi responded: _I’m done. Door is unlocked, cum on in._

A moment later, his phone buzzed in his hands. _levi._

_Yes?_

_that was unnecessary_

It was then that Levi noticed autocorrect had failed him. Still, he played along. _Cum is always necessary_.

Armin didn’t respond to that, so Levi assumed she was having a good laugh with Eren. 

Soon, the door to his office opened, and the scent of warm, spiced apple cider filled the room. Levi paused the episode on a shot of very large and barely-covered breasts bouncing in ways that he knew for certain were not physically possible. Despite himself, he felt his dick twitch in mild interest. 

Eren was bundled up in the same sweatshirt and jeans he had worn all through the winter; Armin had on a light jacket over her button-down and slacks. Levi felt like he was looking at some sort of jock-and-nerd romcom, but he knew that, in reality, Eren was about as athletic as a rock and Armin, while definitely a nerd, was a far cry from the stereotypical shrinking violet. 

Armin handed Levi a thermos. “Here’s your hot apple cum,” Armin said, proving him right.

Levi opened the thermos and took a long drink. “Delicious,” he said, licking his lips. “Not how cum usually tastes, though.” 

Armin snorted. She and Eren took the seats across from Levi at his desk and opened up their own thermoses; the scent of spiced apple strengthened, making them all feel warm and sleepy. 

“What are you watching?” Eren asked. 

“Crap anime,” Levi responded, and turned the laptop around to show him. 

Eren laughed, and Armin furrowed her brows and cocked her head to the side. “I don’t get it,” Armin said. 

“Get what?”

“I know I’m straight and all, but those boobs don’t even look slightly realistic. How does it turn guys on so much?” 

Eren grimaced; Levi pursed his lips. 

“...Did I say something wrong?” 

“No,” Eren answered. “It’s just that the answer is kinda shitty.”

Levi nodded in agreement. 

“I don’t know about all guys, but, it’s not that the _boobs_ turn me on. It’s the, sort of, fanservice thing. The way the show frames them as sex objects that are there for _me_.” 

“Same,” Levi said. “Though the protruding nipples do actually turn me on, that’s just a thing for me all the time.” 

“Oh,” Armin said. She frowned. “I guess that makes sense, in a way.”

“I wish it didn’t, honestly.” 

“So if I had boobs that big--” Armin began to ask, but was quickly cut off. 

“No,” Eren said. “Your back would break.”

“It would hurt, at least,” Levi confirmed. “I’ve had enough women tell me, the ideal size is a C cup -- big enough to be fun, but not so big that you get spinal problems and your areolas get so stretched out there’s no sensation left.” 

“That’s a thing?” Armin asked, slightly horrified. 

“Mm-hm.” Levi gestured at the laptop screen. “Every time this girl gets her tits grabbed and moans, I know she’s faking it, and so does her voice actor.” 

“Oh,” Eren said, “it’s _that_ kind of anime.”

“It’s ecchi, not hentai.” Levi did not mention the straight-up pornographic OVA. That was _different_. “Did you two have anything planned for tonight? Besides drinking apple cider in my office, I mean.”

Armin and Eren shrugged. “I finished my homework,” Armin said, and Eren agreed between sips. 

“Date night?” Eren suggested. 

Levi smirked. “On a Tuesday? ...That actually sounds nice. We all have an early start tomorrow, though, so nothing too fun.” 

“We could walk through town,” Armin suggested. “It’s a nice night.”

“Mm. A romantic spring walk through town with cider.” Levi closed up his laptop and started putting it in his bag. “Sounds great.” 

“You’re in a good mood,” Armin observed. 

“Yeah. I am.” 

“What about?”

Levi looked toward the window; Armin and Eren followed his gaze, as if he was looking for something. “I don’t know. That’s the weirdest part.” He looked back at his partners, then shouldered his laptop bag and wrapped his cape around himself. “Let’s go.”

Levi was actually kind of warm in his cape when he stepped outside; he had already taken out the removable winter lining, but the thick wool exterior held heat in quite well. Soon he wouldn’t need a jacket at all -- and not long after that, he would melt in his white jeans and button-downs. Armin was comfortable, dressed properly for the weather; Eren felt a little warm, as his body heat had thoroughly seeped into his sweatshirt, but he was fine for now, even with Armin and Levi pressed up against his either side, closer and closer the farther they got from campus. 

Eren made to turn down the street to the apartment, but Armin gently nudged him to keep going deeper into town. “It’s still early,” Armin said. “And I doubt Levi has had dinner.” 

Levi’s stomach gave a timely growl, stopping him from offering any denials. 

Armin laughed. “DId you want us to cook, or are you gonna pick up something?”

“Hm.” Levi thought about it for a bit. “Why don’t we make this a real date? We’ll go sit down somewhere.”

“We already had dinner, though,” Armin said. 

“Dessert, then. Train Bar has good cheesecake.”

“A bar? Really? We can’t drink, you know.” 

“It’s not really a bar,” Levi explained. “It’s just more bar than restaurant. I mostly go there for the quesadillas.” 

“Hmm. Alright. Lead the way.” Armin linked her arm with his and pressed her smile to the rim of her thermos, taking a sip of deliciously still-warm cider. 

Train Bar was actually rather far out into town, past the bridge and right next to the temporary train platform. In fact, the bar itself was located in a building that used to house the old train station, before it went out of service, hence the name. There were several entrances, but the main entrance was, confusingly, not the double doors nearest the road, but a smaller glass door halfway down the path. 

The inside had what one might call “mood lighting”, had one never actually experienced mood lighting before. It was dim, but not so much that one had any trouble seeing; just the kind of dimness that came from lighting a restaurant with mismatched ceiling lamps and neon wall art. It was cozy, and smelled of cigarettes from years long past when people could still lawfully smoke indoors, but without the haze of smoke that would turn away anyone with more delicate lungs. Several large televisions around the bar were turned to various sports channels, though not all to live games. 

Being as it was a Tuesday evening, and far from a rush night, they were seated immediately in a booth. The other occupants of the restaurant included about five people at the bar, a party of about twenty at a bunch of tables pushed together, and whoever was in the private room -- it sounded like a birthday party. 

The trio did indeed get cheesecake, one slice each; Levi got his quesadilla in a to-go box, intending to probably eat it later, and if not, for breakfast. 

When their desserts came out, a familiar voice called, “Armin and Eren?” They looked up to see Hanji, grinning and waving from the large group across the room. “Oh! And Leeeeeevi too?”

Levi smiled at them, which made Hanji recoil in shock before leaving the table and coming over. 

“You came all the way down here and didn’t even say hi?” Hanji accused. 

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” Levi explained. “Why _are_ you here, anyway?” 

“The munch. I come here every month.” 

Levi blinked. “Oh. I thought that was second Thursday, in Florence.”

“That’s We-Quee-Kis. The Valley one is today.” Hanji sat down next to Levi, nudging him further into the booth with their hips. 

“We… quickies?” Armin asked.

“We-Quee-Kis. Western Massachusetts Queer Kinksters,” Hanji expanded. 

“Oh.” Armin shoved cheesecake in her mouth, her face going red. 

“Kinky people get together and have not-kinky food every once in a while. That’s what a munch is.” 

“So all those people…” Armin looked over at the group; most of them were laughing at some unknown joke. “That’s more than I’d expect.”

“Today’s a small group, actually. Sometimes we bring in over fifty, and they’ll give us the party room if it’s not booked.” 

“Wow.” 

“You seem curious.” Hanji’s grin curled at the edges, almost predatory, except that Hanji was the furthest thing from predatory, and instead was very excitable and enjoyed introducing people to new things. 

“Um, I.” Armin stuttered a bit. “I guess I am. What do you talk about?”

“Work. Sex. Family. TV shows. D&D. Bondage, dominance, submission, and sadomasochism. Sometimes we show cute cat videos to each other on our phones. Sometimes we take over the teeny ‘ballroom’ and do lessons.” 

“Lessons?”

“Mhm. I did beginner rope bondage last month. Earlier in the year we had someone talk about different types of floggers and what they do.”

“What’s a flogger?” Armin asked. 

“Something you hit people with.” 

“Or get hit with,” Levi cut in, amusement lacing his voice.

Hanji rolled their eyes. They gestured at themself, then at Levi. “Dom; sub.”

“I’m a switch, thanks.”

“Sub _mentality_.” 

“...That’s fair,” Levi acquiesced, because even if he could enjoy being dominant every once in a while, it definitely didn’t come naturally to him. Not that most people would expect that of him. 

“You’ve been quiet, Eren,” Hanji pointed out.

“Oh. Um.” Eren scratched the back of his neck. “Mikasa knows a lot about this stuff -- dunno why, since she’s not actually _into_ any of it, or sex in general, but she knows stuff, so she’s told me about it. It’s not really new to me?” He shrugged and poked at his cake, scooping off a piece with his fork. “Well, I mean, none of what you said is new. Except the munch thing, I didn’t know that was a thing. But, Armin, I thought you knew about this stuff too?”

“Really vaguely, yeah.” Armin’s beet-red face matched the strawberry sauce on Levi’s cheesecake. 

“Would you like to find out more?” Hanji asked. 

“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Armin said, at the same time that Eren said, “Yeah!” 

“You won’t be intruding at all! We love newbies. Come on over once you pay, alright? And we won’t be out too late, so don’t worry your little butts about your nine-AMs.” Hanji pressed a disgustingly wet kiss to Levi’s cheek before flying out of the booth to rejoin the munch. “Tip your server!”

“I always do!” Levi called after them. 

“Oh my god,” Armin mumbled into her hands, covering up her face. 

Eren gently rubbed her back. “We don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” Armin said, resolute despite her shaky voice. 

Levi signalled for the check, and they each paid for their own in cash (with Levi giving his usual extremely generous tip on top of Eren and Armin’s more typical ones). They moved over to the long line of tables, where Hanji had pulled up three more seats near the end for them. 

“Holy shit, is that Lance?” someone shouted at Levi from across the table. 

Levi cringed and hoped he was not about to be propositioned. “Call me Levi. I haven’t been Lance Corporal in years.” 

“Did you change your name?” Armin asked. 

“No, that was my… professional name.”

“Ah.”

“And what a professional you were,” the same person said, followed by laughing. 

Levi didn’t recognise the face, but from his words, the stranger must have known Levi while he was in sex work. Levi glared at him, and watched for a moment longer, reading his body language. _Dom, and a self-absorbed one too. Insecure about own status. Makes up for it with bullshit. Probably never fucked me, but tried to get me to do it for free._ “If you’re going to make fun of me, I’ll fucking break you.”

“Oho, you will?” 

“Six hundred on Levi,” Hanji announced, reaching for their wallet. They knew how to play this game. 

The asshole shut their fucking mouth, finally, and returned to whatever conversation they’d been having before.

“Sorry about that,” Levi said to his partners. “Some people are assholes.” He hadn’t been to a munch in years, but that fact never changed; there would always be an asshole or two. It sucked, though, that that had to be included in Eren and Armin’s first experience with such a group. 

However, someone closer to their seats struck up a conversation immediately after. “I haven’t actually seen any of you around here before. I’m Frieda.” She smiled, much more kindly. “You’re friends with Hanji?”

“Mm-hm,” Levi confirmed. “I’ve been to munches around here, years ago.” He gestured to Eren and Armin. “They’re new.” 

Eren and Armin introduced themselves, both wide-eyed like anyone new to the community tended to be. 

“Are you together?” Frieda asked. 

“Yes,” Eren said. 

“Not like, like _that_ ,” Armin tried to explain. For all that she enjoyed a certain level of power exchange during sex, Armin didn’t think of it in terms of, well, _power exchange_. “We’re just dating.”

Frieda nodded. “So are you vanilla, or just new?” 

“Not really either,” Eren answered. “I know about some stuff… Armin likes some stuff…”

“Eren!” Armin shouted. 

“What? We’re here…” Eren gestured down the table. If Armin focussed, she could hear a conversation about braiding whips, and another about fire play -- though the conversation nearest them was about Doctor Who, and at the far end of the table two people were playing Yu-Gi-Oh while a third spectated. 

Frieda watched Armin’s nervousness slowly dissipate, and when Armin had gone from mildly panicked down to just slightly fidgety, she spoke again. “What kind of stuff are you into, if you don’t mind me asking?” 

Armin’s eyes went wide. 

To save Armin a little embarrassment, Levi answered first. “I like bruises. As Eren knows.” 

Eren grinned at the memory of Levi covered head-to-toe in his love bites. “Ah, I remember that. Is that a kink thing?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“So, pain?” Frieda asked. 

“Yes and no. I like pain, but I like the marks more. If I didn’t like the pain I’d still do it for the marks. I’m also Hanji’s model for fetishwear; I don’t know if they’ve talked about it here.”

“Oh, we know all about Hanji’s fetishwear. I’m the one that distributes her designs.” 

Levi snapped his fingers. “Oh, right, I knew you looked familiar. You own the _other_ sex shop.”

Frieda laughed. “It always cracks me up how everyone calls us that, just ‘cause we’re farther from campus.” She turned her attention to the two she hadn’t heard from yet. “So what about you two? What do you like?”

Eren tapped his bottom lip, for a moment, thinking (while Armin was still fidgeting) and blurted out, “Butts.” At that, Armin started to laugh, uncontrollably. “What? I do. You both have really nice butts.” 

“So do you,” Armin said, between her giggles. 

“I guess I kind of also like, um, role referrals?” Eren attempted. 

“Role reversal,” Levi corrected. 

“Yeah, that. Like, I guess I’m the more… dominant? Sort of? One out of the three of us, but I like it when it’s the other way too. It’s kind of funny, though, since Levi’s older; I guess I’ve watched too much porn, I expected him to be more…” 

“I _can_ be, if you want.” 

Eren shrugged; his face got a little warm, but it wasn’t noticeable to anyone else. “I told you, I like it either way.”

“Think you’d like it if I did that too?” Armin asked, a little quietly. 

“You already have, though. That time back home, in the forest?” 

Armin covered her eyes with her hands. “You remember that?” 

Eren shrugged. “I think about it a lot.” 

Armin put her head down on the table and groaned quietly. “You never brought it up again! I thought you forgot.” 

“Are you disappointed I remember?” 

“No! Not at all. I would’ve done it again if I knew you liked it that much.” 

“ _Oh_.” 

Frieda chuckled at the pair, while Levi looked at them fondly (or, as fondly as his tightly-wound public emotional mask would allow). 

“Armin,” Levi called. “You have something to offer?”

Armin squeaked, still from her position bent over the table, then lifted her head. “I liked, um, with the glasses.” 

Levi’s emotional mask disintegrated, and he hid behind his hand a smile so wide it hurt.

“Glasses kink?” Frieda asked. 

Levi shook his head. “Google Glass. I wore them during sex and recorded her.”

“Oh my! It’s been a while since I met someone new with a sex tape.” 

Armin felt a little bolder now that she’d started talking. “And the, um, the thing you did after, what’d you call it?”

“Muffing.” Levi smirked; it wasn’t in the video, so Eren didn’t know about it yet. If Armin liked it, he might have to teach him. Not that he _minded_ at all. 

Armin nodded. “And the way Eren sounds when I touch his thighs, does that count as a kink?”

“Definitely,” Levi confirmed, because it turned him the fuck on too. 

Eren elbowed her. “I totally accept my sex noises being a kink if yours are too.”

Armin nodded, acquiescing. “I also really like it when I get my hair pulled. And maybe I’d like being tied up, but not restrictively; more the artistic stuff? And one time Eren scratched up my back and I cried and he thought it was because I didn’t like it but it was actually because it felt really good--” Armin paused for breath, and realised how much she’d just said. She snapped her mouth shut. 

“For someone almost reluctant to come over here, you’ve got a lot to offer,” Levi said. He wasn’t making fun at all, but after he said it, he realised it might have come off that way; however, Armin knew he meant no malice by it. 

“I’m sure you have plenty more, Professor Purple Dildo.” 

“I do. Most of them involve roleplay and all possible levels of power exchange.” 

“Oh. Like what?” Eren asked.

“Some might scare the two of you,” Levi admitted.

“Like what?” Eren repeated. 

“...Like things that will give much heavier bruising than some love bites.” Okay, that _wasn’t_ what Levi was originally thinking of, but he really didn’t feel like talking about it today. He didn’t think Eren and Armin would judge him, exactly, but it would color their relationship in a way he didn’t want, especially since he didn’t plan on ever doing any of his more risky interests with either of them. 

Still, Eren and Armin stared expectantly. 

“Have you ever been kicked in the face?” Levi asked. It was, surprisingly enough, the safest ground he had to walk on that still counted as Definitely Not Light BDSM. 

Eren and Armin both gasped at the same time. Levi found it kind of funny. “You _like_ that?” Armin asked, inclining her head in disbelief. Levi just didn’t seem the type to let _anyone_ so much as think about putting their nasty feet anywhere near his face. 

“Hmm… the dislocated jaw wasn’t fun, but the boot-shaped bruise was nice.” 

Eren squinted, like he was curious. Before he could ask, however, Levi said: “I’m not doing it to either of you unless it would literally save your life, so don’t ask me to. If you want to try it, I’m sure there’s someone at this table who would be happy to kick you.” 

“If you want to try,” Frieda supplied, “there’s a couple dungeons in the area. They don’t meet regularly, but there should be a bunch soon; the Valley Power Exchange’s anniversary is next month.”

“Dungeons?” Armin asked. “I thought that was just a creepy rich people thing.” 

“They’re not permanent sex dungeons or anything.” Frieda explained. “We rent out spaces. Usually dance bars on off-days. And we bring stuff from home so people can try out new things. Some people do have their own private home dungeons, but they’re, well, private.” 

“Do the couple with the fire play stuff still come around?” Levi asked. “It’s been years, but…”

“They do, but they live in Connecticut now, so they really only come by for the big dungeon parties. I’m working out an arrangement for the official VPE one in a few weeks; they’ll probably be there if you’re interested.”

“Mm, no. I’ve had my experience, and I don’t really like being lit on fire. They were just funny. They would make jokes about animal sex while mixing alcohol solutions.” 

“That’s… weird,” Armin said, half-smiling. “Not a bad weird. Just…”

“Not what you’re used to hearing over dinner?” Frieda supplied. 

“Yeah. Do you all talk about this at home, too?”

“Well, of course. Kink negotiation, for one thing, happens primarily in the home. Not around the family of course, but in the bedroom, when we’re alone in the house…” Frieda nodded to her left, where her wife was talking animatedly to the man next to her about Swedish language structure. A thick rose-gold chain peeked out above her shirt’s neckline, with a lock-shaped pendant hanging from the end; the necklace was long enough that she could tuck the pendant into her shirt, but she chose not to here. Armin and Eren realised it was a discreet collar. 

“What else are you into? I mean,” Frieda paused, gesturing at the rest of the table, “aside from What It Is That We Do.” 

Levi snorted, but stayed otherwise silent, letting his partners answer first now that they were in more familiar territory. 

“Art, mostly,” Eren said. “I’m an art student, so I don’t really do much else. Um, I like coffee -- well. I hate coffee. But I need coffee. So I like coffee, conceptually…” He trailed off and turned to Armin. 

“I’m a history major,” Armin said, turning her voice up at the end so it sounded like a question. “I was also in a play recently -- Rocky Horror. And I’ve been watching Star Trek.”

“Which series?” Frieda asked. The gleam in her eyes indicated she was a fan. 

“The first one. I haven’t decided if I’ll watch the others yet. I really like it, but I don’t have a lot of free time that I don’t already spend with these two or my other friends, so it’s slow-going.” 

“Hey, it’s a good place to start,” Frieda affirmed, “and you don’t have to watch the rest if you don’t want to. My favourite is Deep Space Nine, but it’s definitely not for everyone.” 

Armin chuckled. “Funny. It’s always the original, or Next Generation, or Deep Space Nine, or sometimes the new movies. No-one ever talks about Voyager or Enterprise.”

Frieda opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but she paused halfway through an intake of breath. Her eyes travelled up and to the side, like she was searching some far-off sky for an answer. Evidently, she didn’t find one; her only response was a pitched-up, “Yeah…” She sighed, and shook her head. “What’s your favourite episode so far?” 

Armin thought about it a bit. “I watched a bunch out of order with a friend first, so I’m not quite at this point in my own crawl through, but I’d say _The Trouble With Tribbles_.” 

“Yessssss, good choice.” 

“Honestly, seeing Spock warming up to the tribbles, and Kirk getting a thousand or so dumped on him, and Uhura -- I think she rubbed one against her face? That was really cute.” 

“It was. Are you going to watch the movies?”

“Mm-hm. For the original series, at least. I’ve heard they’re pretty gay.”

“They _are_.” Frieda was outright grinning at this point. “I hope you keep enjoying it!”

“I think I will.” 

Armin had nothing left to say on the matter, so Frieda redirected. “So, Levi, was it? What do you do?”

“I paint naked people,” Levi answered. 

“Wow. You say that like it’s somehow different from the usual artistic nudes.”

“Mm. Let me rephrase: for the last five years, I’ve painted exclusively genitals.”

“ _Ah_. I see.” It was different, definitely, but Frieda seemed unphased. 

“You could say I’m branching out now, in painting the whole form.”

“Is that what you do for a living? Painting?” Frieda was honestly un-judgemental, which, while not a first for Levi, was rare. 

“Yeah. I’m on a visiting professor thing right now, but for the most part I make more than a living off my art.” 

“What do your paintings usually go for?” Frieda asked. 

Eren and Armin answered together, before Levi could: “Tuition.”

“That’s the lower end these days, actually,” Levi corrected. 

“Are you all at the same school then?” Frieda asked. 

“Ah, yeah,” Levi confirmed, a little self-conscious. 

“Oh.” 

“I’m not their professor,” Levi said, holding up his hands. “We met when I modelled for a class.” 

“I wasn’t going to say anything about that. I know it happens, and it’s not my business; I was just curious. You’ve all said you have other friends, so I assume they’re looking out for you if there is anything to worry about.” 

There was an awkward, tense silence for a few moments down at their end of the table. Unable to take the intense stare-off between Levi and Frieda, Eren interrupted them with, “Levi! Do you watch anything interesting?”

To this, Levi replied by leaning over the table and groaning loudly.

\---

On their way back to the apartment, Eren noticed a very familiar shaved head. 

“Connie?” 

Connie flinched, and it was noticeable even from half a block away. He turned around, smiling sheepishly. “Uh, hey. Having a nice date?” he asked, assuming correctly that that was why the three of them were walking around together. 

“Yeah, it was great. But what are you doing in town? Don’t you have a night lab?” 

“Uh, yeah, I. Um.” He fidgeted a bit, looking torn between breaking into a run and spilling all his secrets. “No. I don’t. There’s no night lab for Intro Engineering,” he admitted. Honestly, part of him was surprised no-one ever checked -- but then again, why would anyone have any reason not to believe him? “It’s just in the afternoons. I’ve, um. Been coming into town.” 

“Doing what?” Armin asked. 

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Connie said instead of any admission. 

“Are you doing something that could get you in trouble?” Eren asked. He stepped closer, worried about his friend. 

“No! No. God no. I’m actually, um, I hope I’m bringing less trouble to the world with this. I just really don’t want people to know, you know?” He scrunched up his face, eyes pleading. “Don’t tell anyone, please. I really wanted to keep this private.” 

“Okay…” Eren acquiesced. 

“If you need to talk about it, though, you can trust us,” Armin added. 

“It’s not a matter of trust. I… well, I couldn’t blame you for throwing a fit if you found out, or if anyone else did.” Connie sighed. “I’m going back now. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” 

Armin and Eren said goodbye; as soon as they turned down Levi’s street, Connie having long since speed-walked out of earshot, Armin said, “That was weird.”

“A little bit, yeah,” Eren agreed. 

“I really hope he’s okay,” Armin said. “I mean, Connie’s pretty strong and all, but everyone has their limit, you know? I’ve always felt like I don’t know him as well as I should; I’d never know if he reached that point.” 

“I guess all we can do is trust him for now. It seems like what he’s doing is supposed to help people, so I can’t really tell him off for it.” Eren looked to Levi, who had been silent this whole time. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I only know Connie from critiques, anyway; I wouldn’t know what to tell you about him.” 

“He’s really great,” Eren said. “The kind of guy who will make an extra cupcake in his baking class for your birthday, or your half-birthday if it’s during a break. And I think he walks dogs as a side job.”

“He’s super hard-working, too,” Armin added. “I mean, you have to be, for engineering, but he’s even a double major. And on top of that, he always makes time to hang out with people; I don’t know how he does it.”

“He also makes really good jokes. And a lot of it is like, making himself look ridiculous just so we can laugh, and he enjoys it.” Eren looked over his shoulder. “I really hope he’s okay,” he said, echoing Armin. 


	55. Hump Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Less humping than you’d expect.

“Eren! Wake up! It’s hump day!” 

Eren groaned from beneath a pile of blankets and pillows in the middle of Levi’s bed. Armin jumped on top of said pile, and Eren grunted loudly as an elbow dug into his shoulder, but then Armin hugged his lumpy form tight and repeated: “It’s hump day!”

Eren felt Armin wiggling above him, and assumed that she was, in fact, humping his blanket pile. “Rain check, please. I’m too tired.” 

“Class starts in an hour, and if you don’t get up and shower, we won’t give you that rain check.” 

“I can go without sex today if I can sleep another forty minutes,” Eren decided. 

Armin frowned and lifted herself off of him. “He won’t budge,” she told Levi. 

“All right, get off. I’ll do it myself.” Levi finished buttoning his cuffs, then flexed his arms, making sure there was enough room in the sleeves of his slightly tight shirt for what he was about to do. He loomed over Eren (though the younger man was blissfully unaware, assuming he would be left alone, having heard none of Levi and Armin’s quiet conversation) and very suddenly dug his ice-cold hands under the blanket. He managed to get at just the right angle to press against Eren’s belly; Eren flailed and shrieked, and Levi got a good grip on him before hauling Eren out of bed and into his arms. 

Eren struggled a moment longer, then went limp and let out a pitiful, “Fine, you win, I’m awake.” 

Levi set him down to stand on the floor and left him to his own morning routine. 

Eren looked to Armin with his most pathetic puppy-dog pout. Armin spared him a pitying look, then took the blanket off his shoulders and steered him toward the bathroom. 

“Do I get a shower blowjob for hump day?” 

Armin thought about it for a moment. “After your shower; I already dried my hair. There should be enough time if you hurry.”

“Are you making fun of me?” Eren asked, not that he was still self-conscious about his fantastic ability to make every sex a quickie. It was like Levi’s thing about being short; it didn’t bother him, until someone made fun of him for it. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Get clean.” Armin shut the bathroom door and headed into the kitchen once she heard the water turn on. “Coffee?” she asked Levi, and he blinked and started putting the coffee maker together. “You seem distracted.”

“Mm.” Levi didn’t look at her. “I’m having a really good few days. I’m not used to this.”

“What’s been so good?” 

“I don’t know if it’s any one thing. I just feel good. Not bored and miserable like I usually do.”

“I guess things are going pretty well for you.” 

Levi snorted as he keyed in the coffee settings. He knew she meant the recent things, like his siblings showing up out of the blue, but he couldn’t help but think of all the things that hadn’t made him as happy as they maybe should have over the years. “Some would say things have been going well for me for about five years.” 

“Is that when you sold your first painting?” Armin asked. 

“First one that went for more than a thousand. Lot more than a thousand, actually. I lived off that check for a year, and then they just started flooding in…” 

“That’s a quick buildup.” 

“I guess.” Levi had never really thought of it; had been too grateful for his break at first to question his luck, and then got almost used to it far sooner than he expected. “The art world is kind of different from anything else. You might get a steady income, or you might be flat broke for years and then suddenly the right person finds you and, like a switch flips, people are lining up to buy every testicle you slap a bit of turpentine on to for what it’d cost to pay all your debts ten times over.” 

“Wonder what the new series would go for…” Armin mused. 

Levi took a deep breath. “I had Hanji and Eren appraised last week.”

Armin perked up. “Oh?”

“Mm.”

“And what’s the value?” Armin wasn’t sure why she was so curious; she thought it was mostly pride, that she knew someone whose skill and creative power were worth so much. Part of her also wanted to imagine what Eren would be like if he reached Levi’s level. 

Levi took a deep breath. “Highest yet.”

Armin stared at him. 

Levi told her. 

“Holy _fucking shit_.” 

A little color came into Levi’s cheeks. 

“That’s _incredible_!” Armin shouted. “I didn’t know art went for that much! What do you even _do_ with all that money?” 

“Well.” Levi was pretty sure it was a rhetorical question, but Armin stared at him expectantly, so he answered. “I co-own three orphanages and heavily support a fourth, and I’m a huge contributor to need-based financial aid at Wall and my community college, and I like to go through GoFundMe every once in a while and see what people need…” Levi shrugged. “I also pay all my models out of pocket. I certainly am not going to use it all on myself. I get some nice things here and there, but I don’t need all that much.” 

Armin’s eyes were starry and bugging out of their sockets. “You could live _anywhere_. You could have _anything_.” 

“As of a few days ago, I have everything I could ever want but for the completely impossible,” Levi said quietly. He inspected his nails, though there was nothing to inspect. “I’ve been looking at apartments in New York.” 

“You’re moving?” Armin asked. 

“No. It’ll be a second home, officially, but it’s for Farlan and Isabel. I just need to know where they work, first, so I can get them the easiest commute possible.” 

“Are they gonna be okay with that?” 

Levi shrugged. “If they want to pay me rent, I won’t stop them, but I’m also not gonna kick them out if they miss a payment. They seemed like they were going through that a bit, since Farlan said they move around a lot.” 

Armin squinted at him. “Maybe ask first?” 

“If they really hate the idea, I won’t do it. But when we were together we always said if one of us ever gets super-rich we have to splurge for the others. Maybe it was an impossible dream then, but for me, it was a promise I always intended to keep.” 

“You’re so… generous.”

“I guess.” 

“It’s sort of mind-blowing. You always hear about greedy rich people --”

“I am absolutely a greedy rich person. I could sell these paintings for a dollar if I wanted to. I could give them away.” 

“But it seems like you sell them for what they’re worth because you have somewhere better to put that money.” 

“I also still feel like I’m scamming the other greedy rich people out of their life savings, and I love feeling like that.” The coffee finished, and Levi poured it out into three travel mugs. 

Armin took the mug that was handed to her, and added in her milk and sugar before capping it to keep in the warmth. “You’re the most generous asshole on the planet,” Armin said, her expression soft and full of love. 

“In more ways than one,” Levi said, a leer in his eyes. 

“ _Levi_.”

“What? Do you know how many people have had this ass?” 

“Do _you_ know?” 

Levi grimaced and turned back to the coffee pot, which was almost empty. “Good point. I lost count after a few months.” He rubbed his butt gently in the memory of every dick that had thus far gotten his experience. 

“When was the first time you were paid for sex?” Armin asked. “Uh, I mean, if you’re okay with sharing that.”

Levi poured out the last of the coffee into a regular mug, then dropped and ice cube in from the freezer so it would cool fast enough to drink before they left. It would weaken the coffee, but it was fine. He started to wash the coffee pot in the sink while he answered Armin’s question. “College? Junior year, I think. I told him I was a virgin. I didn’t ask him to pay me, but he did. He was way deep in the closet, so I guess it made him feel better about fucking a guy. Why do you want to know?”

Armin shook her head. “Just curious. Did you enjoy it?” 

“He had a _huge_ cock, so I loved it. Though I think he secretly would have preferred bottoming.” 

“Why do you say that?”

“When we got on the bed, he pulled me on top of him. He only seemed to realise it when I started fingering myself.” The coffee pot was clean, and Levi put it on the rack to air-dry; on the other side of the wall, the shower turned off. 

“Hm.” Armin rested her chin on her hand. “I’d kind of like to see you top Eren.” 

“That can be arranged. If he wants to, that is.”

“He does. He likes role-reversal, remember?”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to be anally penetrated.” 

The bathroom door opened, and Eren exited, wrapped in a towel and chased by billowing steam. “What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty.”

“Fuck.” He waddled down the hall towards Levi’s bedroom. 

“Hey, Eren!” Armin called. “Do you want Levi to fuck you?”

“Um, yeah.” Eren left the door open while he dressed, shouting out to Armin. “Maybe not this very second, since we’re gonna be late. But, you know, my ass is ready, and whatever, if he wants to.” There was the unmistakeable sound of skin hitting skin; Eren had just slapped his own ass. “You too, by the way.” 

Armin raised her eyebrows at that. “Um. We’ll see,” she mumbled, cheeks turning red. Armin couldn’t imagine it, at all, but a part of her wanted to keep trying. She looked to Levi, who had this gleam in his eyes that Armin thought might be smug, at first, but then he bit his lip, thinking no-one was looking, and she realised he was _excited_. “Levi?”

“Hm? Uh.” He dropped the face on impulse, going back to impassivity. “Yeah?”

“You’re excited.”

Levi took a deep breath. “I thought of something.”

“What?”

“Do you know what intercrural sex is?” 

Armin shook her head; she’d never heard of it. 

“Hm. You’ll see, then. I think Eren will like it.” 

“Eren will like what?” Eren asked, coming out of the bedroom with damp hair and rumpled clothes. 

“It’s a surprise,” Levi said, before Armin could repeat what he said. “You’ll see.” 

“Okay. Armin, you said you’d blow me?” 

Armin looked at the clock. “Hmm, eight-forty. We have to go. Rain check?” 

Eren fell to his knees, groaning. “It’ll only take a minute!” 

“Raain cheeeeeck,” Armin singsonged, heading for the door. “Let’s go.” 

\---

The sun was bright, the air was warm, the birds were singing, and Armin was about to fucking fall asleep in the courtyard behind the library. 

She was trying to do homework outside, for once, since it was such a nice day, but it seemed that she hadn’t gotten quite as satisfying a sleep as she thought, because after only one class and what should have been an energy-boosting lunch, Armin found her eyes drooping. She was even leaning against an incredibly uncomfortable boulder, but it felt like the softest bed to her tired body. 

She smacked her cheeks a few times to “wake up, wake up, wake up!” but it was for naught. Armin let out a wide yawn and decided, fuck it, she was getting herself a flavoured latte from the campus cafe, even if she had to walk halfway across campus for it. It would wake her up, and that’s what mattered. 

Jean was the one behind the counter when Armin got there; he took one look at the bags under her eyes and guessed, “Large?”

Armin nodded, mid-yawn. “Hazelnut and, uh, passionfruit? Mocha? Latte? Fuck, does that even sound tasty?”

“Add mint and it will be.”

“Sure, whatever. With whip. And syrup. Thanks, Jean.”

“You got it. Five-sixty.” 

Definitely less than it should actually cost, Armin thought, but she knew Jean had a habit of undercharging his friends. Armin paid with her campus card, and seeing the balance on her receipt, made a mental note that she hoped she would hold on to, to deposit something before she left the campus center building. 

She sat down at a booth near the back with her coffee monstrosity and her books and attempted once more to study. The cafe was mostly quiet at this time of day, during the post-lunch class period, so very little bothered Armin while she did her final readings of the semester. They were for next week, but she liked getting them done ahead of time, especially since she would have a few papers to write and she didn’t want to put them off to the last minute. 

After she finished the first reading (and her second coffee of the day) Armin decided to get up and stretch her legs. She left her things in the booth, taking only her phone and wallet on a walk around the campus center. She remembered to put money on her campus card, and then went outside for a loop around the nearby lawn. 

Armin got a text from Levi, telling her that he would pick up Farlan and Isabel from Springfield at around eleven the next morning, so they might be at his apartment when she and Eren got back. She responded with “OK” and kept walking until about five minutes before classes would let out, at which point she returned to her books. 

It was a slow day, and it _felt_ like one, but Armin didn’t mind. It was okay to have slow days every once in a while; days in which struggling to stay awake was a noteworthy moment. 

The cafe started to fill up with students getting coffee or snacks on their way home from class. Armin felt lucky she had already grabbed the table, as the others must be going fast. 

She heard tapping on the window next to her, and looked over. Connie stood on the other side, and he waved at her. Armin waved back, and gestured for him to join her. 

A few minutes later, Connie sat down across from Armin, and set down a milkshake in a plastic cup. “How’s it feel to be down to your last few homeworks?” Connie asked, in lieu of a greeting. 

“Last one, actually. I’m doing them early. You?”

Connie shuddered. “Feels like I’m dragging myself to the finish line. How do you do it?”

Armin shrugged. “I’ve always done it this way. It’s just habit now. Do you need help with anything?” 

“Physics, mostly. I’m great with conservation of energy equations, but most of the other stuff doesn’t stick…” Connie grimaced. “It’s weird, I’m usually pretty good with numbers, even if letters are like pulling teeth.” 

Armin gave him a sympathetic look. Physics was mostly math, and math was… while not a weak point, exactly, it wasn’t her strongest academic subject. She found herself more suited to the humanities. She’d done physics in high school, but it probably wasn’t at the level that Connie’s Intro Accelerated got to here. “I can’t really help with Physics, sorry.”

“It’s okay, there’s plenty of tutoring sessions this week.” Connie started in on his milkshake. 

“How are you doing, besides? You seemed kind of nervous last night.” 

Connie stopped drinking. His smile fell, just a little. “I, uh, I’d rather not talk about that, if it’s okay.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s just, um. Well, I _do_ want to talk about it, you know? But I don’t wanna deal with what happens after. So... Sorry to keep you in the dark, but I can’t.” 

“It’s fine. We all have secrets.” Armin smiled, chuckling a little to diffuse the tension. “I kept one for eighteen years.” 

Connie stared at her for a moment, then he laughed as well. “Right, right. Well, it’s nothing like that.” 

“I figured. We don’t have to talk about it. Just, are you okay?”

Connie thought about it. He bit his lower lip, and stared down at the table. After half a minute or so, he looked up at Armin, a half-smile on his face. “I’m better than I was. So that’s a start.” 

“Happy?”

“Yeah actually,” Connie said, beginning to laugh again. “Definitely not the miserable wreck I used to hide under bad jokes. Now, my bad jokes are genuine.” He shrugged. “Not perfect, you know. I still worry someone’s going to find out, but, I’m better. That’s what matters, right?”

Armin assumed, from what vague hints Connie gave, that whatever he was doing involved some sort of therapy. “Mm-hm,” she agreed. If therapy works, keep at it. 

“What about you? You doing good?”

“I think so.” 

“You _think_ so?” Connie swirled his straw around in his milkshake, his eyes taking on the same sort of intense observance they did when he was trying to pick apart a physics problem. 

“Well… I think, therefore, I am?” 

Connie stared, like he didn’t quite believe her. Armin sighed. 

“I mean, a lot of good things are happening in my life, and I’m happy about them. Almost happy enough to forget the… not so good things.” 

“Like…?” Connie prompted her to continue. 

“You know. The window.” Armin didn’t like talking about it, so of course, it kept coming up. “Every time I walk past or into Shiga, I see those tarps, and in my head I see the words, and then I see them in reverse from the inside of my room, with the light streaming in… even if I haven’t been up there in weeks. I remember.” 

Connie reached out his hands to cover hers on the table. “Not to sound like a shrink, but, how does that make you feel?” 

Armin spared a little chuckle at his joke. “Really awful. I can’t imagine feeling good about the reminder that there are so many people in the world who want me dead just for existing.” 

Connie’s hands gripped hers tight. “It’s not the same thing, obviously, but you can probably imagine I got a couple of those too. So I feel you.” 

Armin nodded. “How do you deal with that?”

Connie looked down at the table, and at their joined hands. “It’s hard, I won’t lie; you already know that. And it depends on the situation. There are some things where, well, you just have to be the best person you can be with the hand you’re given. And other times -- and this is probably more relevant to you -- you just have to be…” He paused, to take a deep breath. “Completely and utterly confident that you’re just as much of a person, and just as worthy of life, and _more_ worthy of respect than they are.” 

Armin frowned, leaning back in her seat, while still keeping their hands joined. “The confidence part is where it gets me.”

“Yeah. It gets me sometimes too. But you gotta keep trying. You gotta be relentless, ‘cause they are too. Like, I know some people will be racist no matter what I do, and they won’t care about me, ‘cause I’m black and they can’t handle that. I’m sure you know there are people who won’t change for you too. So when it comes to dealing with them, it’s gotta be up to you. At least pretend, even if you don’t really feel good about yourself. Don’t let those fuckers keep you down forever.” 

“Pretend, hm?” 

“Yeah. Do that thing you do when you’re on stage, where you ignore how awkward you feel about faking an orgasm and just go for it.” 

Armin laughed. She had to admit, that was awkward to do and awkward to think back on, but it was _fun_ nonetheless, and she had enough confidence buried deep down to do it no matter how weird it was. If she could find that within her again, every day, or even most days, it could make a big difference. 

There were other times, too, that her buried confidence showed. When she was having one of her feelings-y conversations with Levi, or she was talking about history or the ocean, or she was dancing on her own in borrowed dresses with a half-cliché girl power playlist at top volume. It was always _there_ , she just had to keep hold of it. 

“So that’ll help me ignore the whole people-wanting-me-dead thing?” Armin asked. 

“Ignore it? Hell no. It’ll make you rise above it, and keep on living in spite of them.” 

“That works too.” Armin’s phone pinged with a reminder that her dinner work shift would start in fifteen minutes, interrupting their conversation. “Oh. I should get going.”

“I’ll walk with you.” Connie helped her pack up her books, and he threw out their empty drink cups on the way out of the campus center. 

It had started raining all of a sudden sometime in the last hour, heavily enough that Connie and Armin ran half-screaming across the street to the Shina-side entrance of the Shiga-and-Shina dorm building, and arrived with their outer layers drenched. Armin was thankful for the waterproofing in her backpack; her books and notes escaped it all dry. But her hair was sticking to her face, and the hood of Connie’s jacket was so soaked that the water had seeped through to his head. They parted ways at the entrance, and Armin headed into the kitchen to get her pre-shift dinner while Connie grabbed an empty table for their friends. 

Eren burst in minutes later, having run as usual from his Digital Media class, which ended only ten minutes before his shift. He had a longer distance to run, but he’d left his backpack in a locker before class, so only his clothes got wet. 

Very wet. 

“You live here, right?” one of the full-time dining hall staff asked of him. “Go change, you’ll get sick if you work like that.”

Eren wanted to insist that he wouldn’t, but he felt a sneeze coming on, so he just nodded and fled, waving to Armin as he passed. He didn’t have much clothing left in his room, but he was pretty sure he had a shirt and a pair of pants at least. 

When Eren got back, the dinner line was already moving, but the same dining hall worker let him have a few minutes to eat before he started, since there wouldn’t be any dirty dishes in for a little while anyway. He shovelled London broil and mushroom sauce into his mouth at light speed, and then practically inhaled some broccoli, even after he was told to take his time. Honestly, Eren was still cold from the rain, and wanted to get into the warmth of the kitchen as soon as he could. 

He joined Armin at last, shivering the last of the cold out as he snapped rubber gloves onto his hands. “How was your day?” 

“Alright. I tried to do homework outside but I was too sleepy, so I ended up getting coffee and working in the C.C. instead. I talked with Connie for a while too.”

“Oh yeah? How is he?” Eren grabbed a bucket of dirty dishes and started spraying them with water to get all the remaining food off. 

“He says he’s doing well, and he looks happy. I think, whatever he’s doing, it’s probably not something we have to worry about.” 

“Yeah, I mean, I trust him. I just never really realised there was anything going on in the first place, you know? He always seems so upbeat.”

“He’s far from the only person we know who’s hard to read.” 

“That’s true.” Eren bumped his hip into hers.

“What?”

“You, that’s what. You hide how you’re feeling a lot too.” 

“I was thinking more Levi and Mikasa. You too, sometimes.” 

“That’s true, but it doesn’t mean you don’t.” 

“I’m, um, trying to be more confident, I guess.”

Eren leaned over and kissed Armin’s cheek. “You can be confident and still be open about how you feel. In fact, I think that’s a really important part of confidence. Also, you’ve been like this always -- it’s not a new thing.” 

“Oh.” 

“It’s not a bad thing!” Eren shouted, waving his wet hands around. “I just worry because I sometimes don’t know when you’re sad, and it always has seemed like you were sad a lot but you thought it wasn’t that bad.” 

“Well, it wasn’t. It’s not like I was in some kind of deep depression my whole life. I mean, after Mom and Dad, yeah, but everything else was just kind of…” Armin trailed off, not quite finding the word. “Mediocre? I guess? Not that you and Mikasa are mediocre, oh my god, no, just. Um.”

“No, I get it. Some things kind of sucked.”

“Yeah. And I guess I was already hiding a lot about myself. So if I wanted to keep hiding it, I had to also hide that I was hiding it, so I had to hide how I felt about hiding it.”

“And then you got used to it, and hid everything.”

“Yeah.” 

“You’re being more open these days, though. It’s nice to actually know what’s going on with you for a change. You know, whether it’s good or bad.” 

“You too, you know, if you want to share.” 

“I do, and I try my best. I just don’t really have the…” Eren gestured at his head and let that speak for itself, “...for complex emotions. I guess it helps that I’m a pretty simple guy; I’ll just put what I’m feeling out there when I can actually feel it. I’m not purposely hiding anything.” 

“Okay.” Having filled up a tray of semi-clean plates, Armin put them in the industrial dishwasher, and stacked Eren’s tray on top and ran it. 

Eren stepped away from the sink and draped himself over Armin, his hands meeting over her ribs. “What are you thinking now?”

“I’m thinking if you don’t get your wet hands and apron off my shirt, you’re not getting that rain-checked BJ from this morning.”

“Eh?” Eren jumped away from her. “I forgot about that!” He grinned. “Ooh, now I’m excited.” 

Armin laughed at him while she reached for a new bucket of plates. “I love you,” she said. 

“I love you too!”

After dinner they returned to the art building to do homework; Mikasa joined them after she finished with fencing, looking exhausted. 

“You okay?” Eren asked. 

Mikasa groaned with her head in her arms, sprawled across several drawing horses. “They want me to join some fencing association and do the big competitions next year.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted to do?” Armin asked. 

“Yes, but I’ll be so fucking busy. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do Ymir and Krista’s next thing. For productions that are supposed to be casual and open to the whole campus, there’s so much work involved.” Mikasa knew their production of Rocky Horror was so over-the-top as a result of a relatively long history of annual productions and the Show’s tendency to pick up traditions like glitter (a lot, very quickly, and impossible to remove). 

“The next one isn’t supposed to be quite so, um, extravagant, right?”

“Mmh, yeah, we’re not doing the cast-from-a-hat thing at least. They want to start fresh, and hopefully build it up to what Rocky Horror became over time. But still, they said not to expect any slacking. It was okay if we fucked up with something as ridiculous as Rocky Horror, but they’re going to expect perfection next year.” 

“You could try out for a part with fewer appearances?” Armin suggested. When Mikasa picked her head up and looked Armin in the eye, she amended her statement. “Or not!”

“That’s not my style.”

“Aren’t you up on credits?” Eren asked. 

“Are you suggesting I take less classes?” Mikasa considered it for a moment. “I mean, it’s not a bad idea, but I’m here to learn.” She sat up straight and started getting out her drawing materials. “I guess I’ll decide later. I’ll have a semester to get used to the increased fencing, and then I’ll have a better idea of what I can put myself through. Maybe it’ll even work out that I have too many conflicting classes in the spring and I have to take one less.

“Are we drawing you again today, Armin?” Mikasa asked. 

“Actually, no,” Eren answered. “I’m done with all my homework, so you can both draw me instead.” 

\---

In the morning, Levi walked Eren and Armin to class, and then picked up a Zipcar from campus to take into Springfield and pick up Isabel and Farlan. 

He arrived early by about two hours, not without purpose. There was someone he had arranged to meet; an adjunct professor from Wall who only came in three days a week, when they were teaching. Levi didn’t know Nanaba (always referred to by their last name, even by friends) very well, but they were a close friend of Hanji’s and had invited him over to talk about a collaboration. 

Nanaba was a digital artist; they mainly worked in photography, as well as digital and manual photomanipulation. Levi was curious what sort of collaboration they would suggest, since his own work was meant to look photorealistic and more. 

And even if he decided against it, or to postpone it, today might be a good opportunity to actually get to know one of the other professors in the Art department. Levi knew Keith Shadis, and a few others who had been teaching as far back as Levi was a student, but Nanaba was only a couple years older than him and had been on the west coast until five years ago, and he’d never spent more than the length of a faculty dinner in the same room as them. 

Nanaba’s shoot studio was in Springfield, on the eighth floor of a building of one-room flats (real studio apartments; cheap, small spaces rather than Levi’s big open-plan pillared thing compartmentalised with temporary walls). They did developing elsewhere, in a shared darkroom space across town, but here the flat white walls and the light-diffusing curtain blocking off the window wall made a blank canvas for Nanaba’s photos to turn into magic. 

“Thanks for coming, Levi.” Nanba pulled out two chairs at the table in the tiny kitchen space. 

“Well, you invited me.” Levi sat down in the chair furthest from the door, as he did at home. 

“I honestly didn’t think you’d come. Do you want something to eat? Drink?”

“Water’s fine.” 

Nanaba brought two glasses of water to the table, and a gridded notebook. “I remember you have plans later, so if you like, I’ll get right into the collab proposal.”

“Sure.”

Nanaba opened the notebook and flipped through; pencil sketches lined each page. They stopped on the last written-on page, adjacent to a blank one, and clicked a little lead out of a mechanical pencil. “I’ve been interested in triptychs lately,” they began, “as well as artists responding to one another’s work. I also can’t help but have an interest in the art that comes out of mass-production; it seems almost every artist these days has some grand opinion on it.”

Levi noted Nanaba’s critical tone with amusement. “You say that as if you disagree with them.”

“Oh, I absolutely do. I’m completely in support of the prevalence of art among all people; that’s how it was always meant to be. If ‘selfie culture’ and digital painting are destroying the fabric of society then it’s a destruction I welcome with open arms.”

“You’ve already got my interest,” Levi said. 

“Good. I was hoping your unorthodox subject matter and rebellious personality might imply you shared my views, but I couldn’t be certain.” 

“Rebellious?” Levi mumbled, still amused by Nanaba’s choice of words, and their sort of excessively polite manner of speaking. He wondered if he would sound like that too after a life of constant presence in academia. “So what were you going to do about selfie culture?”

“Embrace it. Celebrate it. Put it in a museum.” Nanaba started sketching, and explained their ideas to Levi. A series of triple images; selfies submitted by Massachusetts residents, Nanaba’s photos from a shoot done for each person, and Levi’s paintings of each of their faces. The series interested Levi, to be sure, but --

“It’s a good idea, but I don’t think I’m the right person for the job, honestly. I do large-scale nudes, and I’m not really interested in painting bust portraits. I can give a few references to other hyperrealists, if you like.” Levi felt kind of bad rejecting Nanaba’s proposal; even if it wasn’t quite up his alley, he could tell they had put in actual effort into the idea and brought him into it because they thought he would see merit in it, which was more than he could say for any of the other artists he’d turned down. 

“I’d appreciate that, thanks.” Nanaba smiled at Levi, despite his refusal to collaborate. “I’m actually kind of happy. A lot of artists say it’s a rite of passage to get rejected by you.”

Levi frowned. “How so?”

“Well, you haven’t done a collaboration for as long as you’ve been making art.”

Not true, but no-one outside of Levi’s very close friends knew about the spraypaint murals. 

“Most people, you won’t even give the time of day to explain their ideas. It’s a high honor to hear you like mine, even if you don’t want to be involved.”

“I didn’t realise you thought that highly of me,” Levi said. “I sort of consider myself an outsider. And kind of a rude asshole. I’m surprised so many people have asked to work with me in the first place.” 

Nanaba just continued to smile at him. They closed up the notebook and tucked their pencil into its spiral. “You’re not that much of an asshole. You let me down graciously, for one.” 

“You’ve been so polite. And genuine. I couldn’t help it.” Levi was kind of surprised about that, too; usually, whenever he saw Nanaba in passing, they had a flat expression, or they were scowling. Maybe they just had resting bitchface like he did. “I’ll get you a list of hyperrealists I’ve talked to without fighting by the end of finals period.”

“Do you fight with other artists a lot?”

“Ohhhh yeah.” 

“You don’t seem the type. I mean, I definitely see you getting angry, but not fighting.”

“Not shouting matches or anything like that. I’m just… honest. If I think something is shit, I’ll say so. It pisses off a lot of people.” Levi remembered one instance in which he’d brought Hanji to a prize-winning performance artist’s gallery closing party, and told them, perhaps louder than strictly necessary, that the particular performance which had won the gallery prize was “the most boring, intellectually disappointing, and historically useless piece of trash I’ve ever seen, and if I were the one giving out awards, he would’ve gotten the blue ribbon for most unworthy of even submitting anything”. It was one of his lighter insults, all things considered, and Levi thought the man could take criticism, but the artist had punched him in the face. He recounted the story to Nanaba; they found it hilarious. 

“I’ve heard much worse. The number of times someone has told me my photo paper would be better served in use as toilet tissue…” 

“People really love going right to TP whenever works on paper are involved. It hasn’t been an original insult since before I was born.” 

“What’s the best insult you’ve ever received?” Nanaba asked. 

“The _best_? There’s a lot of ways to define best.”

“The one that amused you most, then.”

“Oh, that’s easy.” Levi leaned back in his chair and almost smiled at the memory. “I did a painting of this woman’s cunt a few years ago; she had a ton of piercings, apparently it was a kink thing for her. And I had someone, some old man with a really bad wig and an ill-fitting suit, at the gallery opening come right up to me and tell me he thought all my work, but especially that one, looked like the ‘rave scribblings of a druggie prostitute graffiti artist’. And I’ve been all those things, so I laughed right in his face and thanked him.” 

“You must have quite a colorful history.” 

Levi shrugged. “People tell me that all the time. I don’t really agree, but, sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s not like I did any of that because it was my life’s dream or whatever. I liked the sex work, and it was preferable to retail, but I know I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t poor as shit after college.”

Nanaba’s smile dropped, and their eyes drooped in a pity that made Levi look away.

He couldn’t stop himself from talking, though. “Same with the rest; it all happened because of less than ideal circumstances. I see it less as ‘colorful’ and more as evidence of the bleak, gray thing my life has been for the most part.” 

“I’m sorry.”

Levi winced; he hated those empty apologies. 

“I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s clearly not.” Nanaba leaned back in their chair, chewing on what to say next. “I will let it go if that’s what you want.” 

“I’d appreciate that.” 

“Things seem to be looking up for you these days, though, don’t they?” Nanaba asked, hopeful they were on the mark. “You’re quite successful in your painting, and you seem to be happy with Eren and Armin.” 

Levi winced, again. 

“We all know about it. All of Eren’s professors, for sure, and a few others in the department. It’s kind of hard not to notice when your star student’s animations and illustrations are all of either his best friends or the celebrity visiting professor.”

“I know. It’s still weird to hear about it. I keep expecting someone will follow it up with a termination of my contract.” 

“My wife is the head of the department, you know.”

Levi was shocked. “You’re _married_?”

“Yes. Lynne and I have been together for five years now.” 

“You don’t wear rings.” 

“We wouldn’t want to drop one in developer or lose it to welding. My point in mentioning this is, if I know, she does too. And you’re not about to get fired. As far as I’m aware, that particular provision is only in place in regards to students for whom you have grading privileges.” Nanaba stared at Levi in the sort of searching way he recognised from Erwin’s therapy sessions. “If you’re so concerned about it, though, perhaps your relationship with them isn’t doing you as much good as I thought.”

“What do you mean?”

“A relationship that causes you so much anxiety isn’t healthy for you.”

“My relationship with life in general is a lot more anxiety-inducing.”

“Still, you shouldn’t add to that. Have you thought about whether you might feel more secure if you ended it?”

\---

An hour and a half later, Levi tapped his foot impatiently on the concrete of the Springfield train station platform. He stood a ways back from the edge, arms crossed, putting on an expression that was doubly intimidating from his usual mask. No-one stood within ten feet of him -- truly a feat for a tiny man in a crowded train station. 

The delicious meal in his stomach that he’d gotten on the way over did nothing to hold back its rolling. There was too much on his mind, and at the forefront of it was his sudden realisation that he didn’t know his siblings anymore. He loved them, always would, but they hadn’t seen one another in years. Levi knew for a fact he was a different person since they’d last been together. Isabel and Farlan must be too. He didn’t even know if he would recognise them, or if they would recognise him. His hair was different, his voice was different, his hands were still rough but in a very different pattern of calluses. 

The train pulled in, and Levi’s brain filled up with static, until it stopped and the first faces he saw were Farlan and Isabel, disembarking right in front of him. He caught Isabel’s eyes, and she stared back, totally blocking the way until her face broke into a wide grin and she tugged at the front of Farlan’s shirt. She looked back at him, and his lips moved silently, asking _you see him?_ Isabel patted his chest twice, then took his hand and helped him step off the train. 

All the static cleared as soon as Levi saw them; he knew instantly that this was his brother and sister. They looked… older, obviously, but not completely different. 

Isabel flung herself onto Levi, throwing one arm around his shoulders. Levi jumped a little, startled, before tentatively hugging her back. 

After a moment, Isabel stepped back. She pulled Farlan forward until their arms pressed together, and dropped his hand. She signed something for Levi; it took him a moment to recognise it, a moment in which he silently regretted not keeping up with her language as well as he should. 

_Beautiful_.

Levi blushed. He couldn’t help it; Isabel was always the belle of their shitty little ball -- she still was, after all these years. And Levi was still in the fuzz-head stage, even if he wasn’t orange anymore; how the hell could Isabel find him beautiful now of all times? 

“What a way to say hello,” Levi mumbled back, trying his best to maintain eye contact and form his words carefully so Isabel could read his lips. 

“What did she say?” Farlan asked. 

“Called me beautiful. Take a look at yourself, Izzy.” 

Izabel’s face scrunched up, and she stuck her tongue out at him. 

Farlan reached forward, his hand landing squarely on top of Levi’s head. “Still the same height, huh?” 

“Fuck you,” Levi said. He knew Farlan only managed to find him by following his voice, but it was still unsettling. 

Farlan laughed. “Wow, what a way to say hello!” he echoed. “So, spray any good walls lately?”

“Only thing I spray these days is cum,” Levi said, and then looked down at Isabel in horror, having forgotten for a moment that she could totally read his lips. “I mean--!”

Isabel shook with laughter, tiny squeaks escaping her. Her hands moved again, slower this time, and through a bit of context Levi managed to make out _let’s go; I want to meet your lovers_.

His lovers. Right. Nanaba’s suggestions from earlier came back to him, and his stomach did a terrible flip. “Yeah, alright. Let’s get you to the hotel for now, though. I have a class this afternoon, but after that I can bring you over my house. Will that be okay?”

“Could we come to your class?” Farlan asked, and Isabel nodded. 

“Uh.” Levi blinked a few times. “Wait, how did you know what he said?”

Isabel held up their hands, which had joined once more. Her fingers tapped on Farlan’s knuckles, too fast for Levi to follow, and Farlan said, “In Izzy’s words, _you didn’t think we’d go our whole lives writing out our thoughts one letter at a time, did you?_ ” 

Levi tilted his head, in awe of the rapid code they’d managed to develop. 

“So can we come to your class or not?” Farlan repeated. 

“I don’t know that you’d both enjoy it all that much.” 

Farlan smiled in his usual lopsided way. “Maybe I can’t see your paintings, but we still want to spend time with you.” 

“Okay, well.” Levi was suddenly nervous again, mostly because all these years after his siblings still cared about him more than he could ever believe he deserved. “Let’s go.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i personally find it incredibly amusing that snk will get another season before i finish this fic. it’s taking me that long. bet ya the season will start before i get out another chapter!


	56. Cupcake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin and Eren meet the family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout-out to the girl in my printmaking class last year who i didn’t realise was flirting with me all semester until the last day of class, you’re gorgeous and i’m oblivious.
> 
> warnings: mention of drug use, ableist slur, White People

Isabel had her nose an inch away from a student’s painting; said student looked absolutely terrified that she would tip forward and bump into the wet paint, smudging their careful, precise work, or that her hair, box braided and in pigtails, might swing too far forward and do the same. Isabel’s balance was perfect, though, and she leaned back with a grin, her hand twitching in Farlan’s before her fingers wriggled over his. 

“She says the colors are lifelike, and the shadows are well-placed and dimensional, but you’re not done because you airbrushed your model.”

The student looked taken aback, then looked back at their photos. “Oh. I guess you’re right.” 

Isabel gave a thumbs-up. Farlan spoke again: “From the way you painted the eyelashes and the hairline, she knows you have an eye for detail, so make sure you apply it to the blemishes and you’ll be right-on with the realism you’re going for.”

A smile, then, from the student. “Thanks.” 

From a few feet away, Levi watched his siblings move around the room, Isabel critiquing each painting using Farlan’s voice. The students had been confused at first, with Isabel sticking her nose into each painting, yet cloudy-eyed Farlan was the one who told them what was good and what could be improved upon. But they quickly caught on, and without even asking like Levi had when he first met the pair. 

Back then it had been even more confusing to converse with the two, because the only method of communication Farlan and Isabel had at the time was scratching out a letter at a time on one another’s palms, and spelling came naturally to neither of them so it was an incredibly slow process. Isabel rarely got a word across to Levi; even when he started to learn ASL for her, he’d never gotten very far, and she hadn’t been so great at it back then either. Levi and Isabel’s main method of communicating with one another had been through Farlan. 

Levi could tell, even if Isabel didn’t say anything, that she was disappointed he hadn’t kept up with learning sign language. Isabel wanted to communicate with Levi with her own abilities; as it was, the most she could get across to him was simple gestures; words and phrases out of context with a hope Levi would fill in the blanks he couldn’t read from her. 

He felt just as much of a strain with Farlan. The man clearly wanted to be able to appreciate Levi’s work, but for all that his eyes didn’t see, every painting was a splash of void. And Levi wanted to know his thoughts on the paintings too, but all Farlan had to offer was “They smell pretty atrocious.”

Levi wondered if that was life for the two with each other, as well. Farlan, playing music Isabel wouldn’t ever hear; Isabel, teaching kids a visual language that Farlan wouldn’t ever learn. 

He wondered how the three of them managed to get along so well, to care for one another so much, even separated as long as they had been by time, by space, by blindness and deafness and unexplainable trauma. By all means, they shouldn’t have got on at all. But they did. 

At the end of class, Levi headed home, having cancelled his usual office hours in favor of at-request meetings. Isabel and Farlan followed him, out the building, down the hill, and through town to his apartment. 

Armin returned not long after Levi; when he opened the door for her, Armin’s eyes went wide at the sight of the new guests. “Oh wow, hello! I’m Armin.” 

Levi spelled out her name with his fingers for Isabel; the alphabet, at least, stayed with him all these years, though he’d only learned it after being separated from his siblings. 

Farlan held out a hand to Armin and waited for her to shake his. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, but then she caught sight of Isabel signing something to Levi, a frown on her lips. 

Levi nodded at her and signed something back; Isabel looked a bit taken aback. 

“Something wrong?” Armin asked. 

Levi looked at her; Isabel did too, a moment later. “She pointed out that you’re younger than I am.”

“Oh. Well, yeah. What did you say?”

Levi made the same sign with his hand. “‘Student’.”

“She wants to know if you’re a college student,” Farlan announced. 

“Of course! I, uh.” Armin waved her hands around nervously, not sure how to directly answer Isabel. 

Isabel tapped her lips, then pointed to her eyes. _I can read your lips._

“Oh. Well, yes. I’m a student at Wall. Not one of Levi’s students, but we met there.” 

Isabel unlaced her fingers from Farlan’s and reached out her hand; Armin, after a heartbeat’s pause, took it. They shook hands, and as Armin pulled away, Isabel drew something on Armin’s palm with her index finger. 

Armin yanked her hand back, blinking owlishly at Isabel before staring down at her hand. There didn’t seem to be anything there, but it tingled with the unexpected tickle. 

“She gave you a star, didn’t she?” Farlan asked. When Armin looked to him, she noticed he was smirking crookedly. “She does that to people she wants to keep safe.”

Armin clenched her hand; the quick little scratches on her palm had felt kind of like a star, in fact. “Oh. So it’s like a blessing?”

Farlan tilted his head toward Isabel; she chuckled and shrugged. “If you want to think of it that way,” Farlan translated. 

There were steps sounding out behind Armin, clearly audible through the still-open door; Eren came jogging up the steps, then doubled over at the landing, out of breath. “I saw you ‒ _huff_ ‒ walking back ‒ _huff_ ‒ but I couldn’t catch up ‒” He clutched at his chest, then slowly straightened up. “Oh! Hey!” 

“Isabel, Farlan, Eren,” Levi introduced, spelling out Eren’s name with his fingers again. 

“He’s a student, too,” Armin added, at Isabel’s questioning look. 

Isabel held out her hand again, and when Eren took it, she drew on his palm as well. Eren stared at his hand, eyes going nearly cross. “A star? Is that some kind of spell? Or a secret handshake!”

Isabel laughed, loud and uninhibited; Farlan laughed too, a little quieter. 

“Something like that,” Armin said. “She did it to me, too.” 

“Let’s all actually come inside now,” Levi said, and he went around Eren to shut the door. “What do we want for dinner?” 

“Are you cooking?” Farlan asked. 

“Uh, no. I haven’t gotten any better since I last saw you. I was going to order something or take us to a restaurant.”

“I can cook!” Eren said, raising his hand to catch as much attention as possible. 

“You don’t have to,” Levi said. “Besides, I don’t really have much.” There may have been some dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets in the freezer, and lots of fresh fruit and cereal, but not much else. 

“I can go shopping. It’s been a while since I cooked, and I kind of want to.” Eren rocked on his heels. “Maybe I wanna show off for your family too.” Eren glanced at said family; Farlan and Isabel gave him sweet smiles.

“You don’t have to do that for us,” Farlan said.

“It’s no problem, I love cooking!” Eren assured him. “Hey, I could invite Mikasa! Then it can be like a big family dinner thing.”

“I could Skype in my grandpa,” Armin offered.

“I’m not sure I’m ready to meet your grandpa,” Levi said, placing a hand over his eyes. 

Armin considered this. “Good point. I’m not sure I am, either.”

Eren did end up inviting Mikasa; she would come later, after her class and study group, along with Sasha (to whom she was pretty much attached at the hip) and Connie (as he was Sasha’s cousin, and this was a family thing after all). Levi made it very clear that, because he didn’t have enough room at the table, everyone who ended up sitting in the living room would have to be very, very fucking careful not to spill on his white couch. 

Armin and Eren went down to the local family-owned grocery (along with a $100 bill that Levi pushed onto Eren before they left, with a look that made no threats but offered no room for rejection). Armin went to look for vegetables on the list Eren gave her, while he wandered until he found the spices. He knew Levi’s notably low spice tolerance, and wasn’t certain about Farlan and Isabel’s limitations outside of the few allergies they told him, so he kept it pretty simple. Levi already had salt and pepper, and Armin was getting fresh basil, so Eren looked at the back of a dry steak seasoning and then got a few of the listed ingredients - paprika, garlic salt, coriander, and dill. He left out the red pepper flakes, thinking that he’d prefer to stick to spices that were flavorful but didn’t have much heat; he got crushed cloves instead, which was a completely different flavor and not one he usually used for beef, but he always associated clove with big, fancy holiday hams so the smell would probably make the meal seem more top-quality than it was. 

Not that it wouldn’t be good quality. Eren was a great cook. But he was also trying to impress Levi’s family, and it made him feel a little self-conscious. 

Eren also got a small package of brown rice. At the end of the aisle there was a small table of samples: a fancy cheese, and a sauce he didn’t recognise on a thin cracker. He ended up being impressed with both, and the flavors went well with what he was planning, so he grabbed a package of cheese and a bottle of the sauce after checking the ingredients on that as well. 

He joined Armin, who had a basket full of fresh green peppers, an onion, a package of mushrooms, and a bunch of full-size spinach leaves. 

After paying, the pair went to a separate butcher for the meat. Isabel and Farlan didn’t have any preference but Levi had muttered to them before they left that his siblings had probably been eating pork and birds for forever and to get either a fancy fish or some good steaks. Eren wasn’t really feeling up to handling fish that evening, but he did want to try out the completely unused cast iron grill cover for Levi’s stove. Steaks it is.

They returned to Levi’s apartment with the steaks in a cooler bag and the rest of the groceries in Levi’s reusable totes. 

Playing head chef to a sudden room full of people who wanted to help in the cooking, Eren quickly got overwhelmed by the prospect of delegating before they even began; he ended up telling Armin when something needed to be done, and she would assign each task to someone who could do it. Levi, of course, had exactly one consistent job: boil water in the electric kettle as needed. Mikasa, Sasha, and Connie showed up before long and joined in with the very last of it, mostly washing cookware. 

“I can’t believe you made steaks!” Connie said when they all sat down to eat. He and Sasha, known to be not the cleanest of eaters, were at the kitchen table with Mikasa. “When you invited me over, I expected, like, maybe burgers or pasta or something. Shit, it’s been a while since i had a good steak.” 

“You don’t even know if it’s good yet,” Eren pointed out, from across the room. He sat on an armchair, Armin in his lap; Levi and his siblings were on the sofa. 

Connie hummed. “I know all about you and your cooking, Mikasa was gushing on the way over.”

“I was not gushing,” Mikasa insisted. 

“Gushing,” Connie repeated. He started to cut into his steak, taking a moment to close his eyes and sigh happily when he saw the dark, grill-lined exterior give way to a dark pink-red core. “Medium-rare? You’re a god.” 

Eren laughed at Connie’s dramatic antics. He noticed Sasha was already several bites in, looking like she was about to cry in joy. “You good there, Sash’?” 

Sasha looked up at him, her eyes shining. “Mmf!” She went back to tearing into the steak. 

“I think you made them happy,” Mikasa said. 

Eren shrugged, feeling his face heat up at the compliment. He smiled, and looked down, a little bashful. “I try…” 

“Cuuute,” Armin said as she poked him in the cheek. “Oh, wow, you’re warm.” 

“Well, yeah. I’m blushing.” 

“You are?! I don’t see it.”

“You’re not really gonna see a lot of pink through this,” Eren said, gesturing at his face, specifically the mid-dark skin covering it. 

“Oh. I guess not.” Armin glanced around the room at its occupants - first Farlan and Isabel on the couch, then Connie, Sasha, and Mikasa at the table, and finally her Eyes flicked to Eren’s face beside hers. She felt her own face heat up as well as she realised something very important: she had only seen one person in this room, other than herself, with cheeks pink from embarrassment. And Levi’s blushes were _rare_. Mikasa was just not the type to blush, but as for the rest, Armin had never thought about why. 

“Feeling particularly white all of a sudden?” Connie asked. Armin didn’t meet his eyes. 

“Don’t tease her,” Eren said, clearly teasing her a little bit. 

“Yeah,” Levi added, “It’s not her fault she’s the only white person in the room.” 

Armin looked at Levi, slightly cross-eyed in her surprise. “You’re not?”

“Uh, maybe half?” Levi admitted. “I mean, obviously I do, you know, pass as,” he said, waving a pasty hand. “So whoever my dad is probably was white. But Mama was Romani. So technically, unless you’re hiding something under all the blonde, you’re the only white person in the room.”

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” Farlan asked. He couldn’t exactly see race, being literally blind, but he could hear dialects and accents in people’s voices, sometimes, and he knew well enough what it meant to people who could see it. 

“Not really. I mean, I grew up with Eren and Mikasa. I guess, being made aware of the fact is a little unsettling? Like, I don’t usually think about it.” 

Eren offered Armin a forkful of his own mixed vegetables. She took the bite, confused, and Eren patted her face. “I appreciate you trying, my love, but you were starting to put your foot in your mouth.” 

Armin looked down in embarrassment. “Sorry.” 

“Let’s talk about something else, yeah? Like Levi’s beautiful painting of you!” Eren suggested, knowing he’d talk to her about this conversation later, more privately. 

Armin glanced at the large canvas in the corner, currently covered with a large off-white sheet, slightly paint stained. “Well, I guess we can. Maybe let’s not look at it yet, though.” 

“You’re painting Armin?” Farlan asked, at Isabel’s request. Isabel had her lips slightly pursed, and was staring at Levi. 

“Yeah, she insisted,” Levi said. “It’s coming out pretty good. I don’t often get models as gorgeous as the ones I’ve had this year.” 

“Levi!” Armin groaned, and she tucked her head into Eren’s neck to hide. Eren himself looked a bit abashed, taken off-guard by the sudden compliment. 

“How many have you had this year?” Farlan asked. 

“Armin’s the fourth.”

“Wow, you work fast.”

“Not usually. I had a bit of a situation a few months ago, and I ended up starting a new series and working faster as a result,” Levi explained. “Basically, Stohess Museum didn’t actually tell me what _year_ they wanted to display my work, and I thought it was this year. It’s next year instead, but I’ve already started the new series. Don’t want it to go to waste.” 

“Can we come?” Farlan asked. “To the gallery showing, I mean.” Isabel leaned forward in her seat, grinning. 

“Of course, god, do you think I wouldn’t get you fucking VIP tickets to the opening? And I’ll describe everything in perfect detail. You won’t feel like you missed out on anything, I’ll make sure of it.”

Farlan smiled. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to. It’s good for me, too; I get to talk to you instead of the shithead art critics who think they know everything about me just ‘cause I can paint a four-foot-tall asshole.” 

“I’ve been meaning to ask about that, actually,” Mikasa cut in. “Sorry to interrupt. But all these paintings ‒ they’re yours?”

“Yeah. Didn’t Eren or Armin mention…?”

“Oh, they did, and I’ve seen them online. I looked you up a while ago. I just didn’t really… visualise the, um, scale.” Mikasa looked pointedly at the painting that Levi was starting to consider infamous, of Erwin’s turgid penis painted all in blue. “And the number of them that you’d have on display.”

“Does it bother you?”

“A little bit,” Mikasa said, while Sasha made a strange face next to her, like she was questioning whether to add her two cents. “But we wouldn’t have come here if it was really a problem. Eren very specifically said, ‘he paints genitals, naked, up close and personal, and the paintings are everywhere’.” 

“It’s kind of beautiful,” Sasha blurted out. “In like, a really voyeuristic way. To be surrounded by all this, um, junk. Not junk like it’s bad! Junk like, you know.” She gestured at her own crotch. “Junk.” 

Levi leaned back on the couch, surprise evident in his features. “Wow. I don’t get ‘beautiful’ a lot. ‘Voyeuristic’, sure, but not ‘beautiful’. Uh, thanks, Sasha.” 

“Ah- heh. No problem, Professor Levi.” She scratched the back of her head, suddenly nervous. 

Levi cringed. “Please don’t call me Professor in my own home.” Most students didn’t even call their professors ‘Professor’ in class. He was at least grateful Sasha didn’t call him by his last name; very few of the Wall professors preferred that, so it was more natural for students to go by first names. 

“Sorry, Mr. Levi.”

Levi sighed. “Well, that’s a little better. You can just call me ‘Levi’, though. No need to be formal.”

Sasha shook her head rapidly. She leaned against Mikasa’s side, bridging the small space between their chairs, seeking comfort in her touch. 

“Suit yourself, I guess.” Most of Eren and Armin’s friends had dropped off the formality after the whole Protecting Armin situation, but Levi suspected that Sasha was still intimidated by him. Levi couldn’t really blame her. 

Eren excused himself a few minutes later to go to the bathroom; Armin started to sit down in the empty arm chair, but Levi stopped her with a hand on her arm. He shifted over so he was in the chair, and pulled Armin down so sit on his lap like she’d sat on Eren’s before. He wrapped his arms around her waist and she leaned back into him; Levi pressed a kiss to the back of Armin’s neck. Armin sighed; she turned sideways in his lap and curled up against him, the big meal and comfortable warmth suddenly making her sleepy. 

Levi heard a short, high-pitched laugh from the couch; he looked over at Isabel. She had a huge smile on her face, which he didn’t expect to see from someone who’d been rather suspicious of his relationship with Armin and Eren earlier, and still probably was. Isabel took her right hand out of Farlan’s grip and brought it up to her face; she brushed her index and middle fingers over her chin twice. Levi recognised the sign; he turned his face slightly down, his nose and mouth pressed against Armin’s hair while his eyes stayed trained on Isabel. He stayed like that for only a moment, then lifted his head again, resting his chin on the top of Armin’s head. 

“Oh, _cute_!” Eren said when he came out of the bathroom. He took his phone out of his pocket and snapped a few photos; Levi didn’t even grumble about it, and Armin cracked an eye open and smiled before settling herself more completely in Levi’s arms. 

“Send me those,” Armin said. 

Eren texted the photos to both Armin and Levi. “Guess you found a new cushion, huh?” 

Armin let out a breathy laugh against Levi’s neck. “Sorry.” 

“I can move,” Levi suggested, but his arms wound tightly around Armin’s waist showed clearly that he would rather not. 

“No, no.” Eren went to the kitchen table and took the empty chair. “We’re all paired up now; I’ll be Connie’s boyfriend for the rest of the night.” He winked at Connie, who looked flabbergasted. 

“Uh! What.” 

“Problem?”

“No.” Connie blinked a few times, then turned his eyes away and mumbled. “That’s fine, I guess.” 

“We’re not dating, you know,” Farlan said. “Izzy’s my sister.” 

“Well, they’re not dating either,” Eren said, pointing with his thumb at Sasha and Mikasa. “But, like… pairs? Yeah.” He took Connie’s hand. “This okay?”

“Um.” Connie’s eyes went wide. “Yeah. Just. Uhh. I’ve never… dated anyone before? So it’s kind of…”

Eren narrowed his eyes, thinking. “I mean, do you want to? For real, I mean,” Eren clarified. He tipped his chin toward Levi and Armin. “I’ll have to talk it over with them, but‒”

“No, no!” Connie shouted. “I mean, I like you, but as a friend. It’s just, uh, funny. Not what I expected for my first.” He frowned, his eyebrows creasing in the middle. “Probably better than what I expected,” Connie mumbled. 

“Aww, thanks!” Eren squeezed Connie’s hand, and Connie shot him a somewhat nervous smile. “So nothing’s happening with the person from your, uh…” Eren frowned, remembering vaguely Connie had said something while tipsy about a guy he liked in his night lab, but there was no night lab, so was there a guy? Was he at the other thing Connie did instead? He probably shouldn’t say anything more, since Connie didn’t want anyone to know about the not-lab situation, whatever it was. “Happening?” Eren asked, helplessly. 

Connie blinked. “Right. That guy. Uh, no, nothing with him. Probably not gonna happen.” 

“Oh, okay.” Eren didn’t ask further, afraid he’d let something slip if he did. 

“Wait, a guy? I thought you were straight.” Sasha squinted slightly as she asked. 

“I mean, mostly? It’s just the one.” Connie shifted nervously. “Can we not talk about this?” 

“Sure,” Sasha said, dropping it immediately. 

Connie sighed, but he could still feel calculating eyes on him. He looked over at Levi and Armin, and found their gazes on him, mostly concerned but with some measure of the wheels of deduction turning in their heads. He knew Armin couldn’t really help it, her brain just worked overtime, and that Levi kind of always looked that way, but it unsettled him nonetheless. Armin looked away when their eyes met; Levi lingered a little more but turned to his siblings with a exhale that seemed to signify he preferred to just let it go. 

The sun was going down, so Levi nudged Armin a bit. “Babe, I have to take Farlan and Izzy back to the hotel.” 

“Babe?” Armin repeated sleepily. Her face screwed up a bit, like she was holding back a laugh. “That word doesn’t really fit in your mouth.” 

“Sweetie. Darling. Honey. Cupcake,” Levi tried out, his expression deadpan all the while, but then he blew a raspberry into Armin’s cheek. 

“I kind of like ‘Cupcake’.” Armin did laugh, then, but in the next moment she got up off his lap, blinking and rubbing her eyes to hopefully wake up a bit. “It was nice meeting you,” Armin said to Farlan and Isabel. She held out her hand to both of them. 

Isabel got up first; she took Armin’s hand and shook it once before pulling her into a tight hug. Armin gasped with the force of it, but then it was gone in a moment. Farlan, at Isabel’s gentle guidance, did the same, but with a little bit less intense bear squeeze. They hugged Eren in the same manner, and said their goodbyes to everyone else, before Levi ushered them out to lead them back to the hotel. 

Eren started to clean up the empty dishes, and Connie volunteered to help him before anyone else could. Armin offered to help as well, but there was only room for two at the sink, so Armin joined the table, taking Eren’s seat, and the three girls let them wash on their own. 

“So that was a meet-the-family dinner, right?” Mikasa teased. “You should have told us.” 

“You’ve met Levi, though,” Armin said. “His siblings were over, so we thought, why not?” 

“I know, but it would have been fun to show up in party hats and act like the weird in-laws or something.”

“In-laws…” Armin mumbled as she brought her hands up to her face. “It’s not like that!”

It was far from the first time Mikasa had made such a suggestion. “You get so flustered when I say it though, I can’t resist.” 

“Please… I love Levi, but it’s really not like that. If I’m gonna marry anyone, it’ll be Eren.”

Something crashed into the sink, and Connie burst out laughing. Eren sank to his knees on the now slightly wet floor, groaning. “You can’t just say things like that!” Eren whined.

“I don’t mean _now_! Just, eventually, maybe. If you want. Not now.” Armin blushed hard, so much it gave her a head-rush. “Ugh…” She put her head down on the table. “Why do I say things, ever?”

“Oooh, wait ‘til I tell Levi…” Mikasa teased, while Sasha laughed into her hand, eyes sparkling. 

“ _Please_ don’t!” Armin whined. “I don’t want him to feel left out. It’s not even something I think about, seriously.”

“Aww.” Mikasa patted Armin’s head, then fluffed Armin’s hair a little. “Seriously, it was nice tonight. I’m glad we had the chance to meet Levi’s family. And to eat so well; good job, Eren.” 

“I had help,” Eren reminded them, from the floor. Connie lent him a hand and started helping him off the ground. 

“But it was your instructions, you know? I know by now you’re a great cook, but it’s good to have the reminder every once in a while.” 

“Thanks, Mikasa.” Eren went back to washing the dishes, glad to notice he hadn’t broken the one he dropped in his surprise.

Armin’s phone went off in her pocket; she shifted to take it out. “Oh,” she said, when she flipped it open to check the reminder. “Hey, Mikasa… could you, um, go somewhere with me on tomorrow? If you have time.”

“Hm, yeah. I’m free.” She glanced to Sasha who shrugged. “Sure thing. Where did you wanna go?” 

“So there’s, um, a PP in Springfield.”

“Planned Parenthood?” Mikasa asked, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. “For what, testing? Sorry, I shouldn’t ask‒”

“No. Um. Not testing. Not… I’m not going to the PP, exactly. They do referrals for, um, counselling. And endocrinology.” 

“ _Oh_.” Mikasa leaned back in her chair. “I didn’t think you were interested in transition.” She noticed Eren look over his shoulder, but he didn’t say anything, nor did Connie or Sasha. 

“I’m not interested in, like, surgery.” Armin shifted in her seat, not uncomfortable so much as unprepared to really put her thus far mostly private thoughts into words. “But I’ve been thinking I might want to try hormones. I want to know a little more about it first, but I think… it’s what I want. And I guess I have to go through therapy before they prescribe me anything. So I have an appointment with a counselor, in Florence.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll definitely go with you.” Mikasa gave her a rare smile. “I’m surprised you asked me, though.”

“Well, you’re kind of chill about… everything, I guess. I mean, not _chill_ , obviously, you’re the opposite of chill, but you don’t judge. And you’re one of my best friends, so.” Armin shrugged. “You were my first choice.” 

Mikasa’s smile turned soft. “Oh. That’s… Thanks.” 

Armin smiled back, linking her fingers with Mikasa when she reached out. “There’s a bus at one-fifteen, how’s that?”

“Hmm, we should be done with lunch by then. Sure.” Mikasa’s fingers fiddled with the fringe of her ever-present scarf. “Is it weird to say I’m really proud of you? You don’t usually ask for help when you need it, and I think a lot of times you don’t go after what you want either.”

“I guess I’m having a little luck with that sort of thing lately,” Armin said. 

“Oh right!” Eren shouted. He turned around and pointed at Armin. “I remembered!”

“Remembered what?” 

“The thing you asked for. You know. The thing.”

“Which thing?” 

“The… thing…” Eren pleaded with his eyes. “I don’t think you want me to say it. But I remembered.” 

“Thing…? OH. The thing.” Armin’s blush had only recently settled, but it came back in full force. He meant the ass eating thing. Of course. “Oh god. I was hoping you forgot.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Armin admitted, slightly muffled with her whole face hidden behind her hands. 

“We could do that tonight, if you want!” Eren suggested. “Maybe when Levi gets back?”

“Tonight? Oh, that’s… that’s sudden. Um.”

“What thing is this?” Mikasa asked, teasing. Connie snickered, having at least some idea that it was a sex thing. 

“Nothing!” Armin shouted, waving her hands. “Not important.”

“Not important?” Eren repeated. “I guess I’ll just forget about it then.”

“No, don’t ‒” Armin pouted at Mikasa, who had joined Connie in laughing. Sasha was looking between the two, her hand on her mouth. “Oh, hell. Don’t make fun of me.”

“Aw, come on,” Mikasa said. “What happened to the girl who told us with no hesitation about the blowjobs she’d given?”

“That was… You were all high!” Armin whined. “And it was part of a game. There was less pressure.” 

“Are you sure? I thought Jean wasn’t smoking,” Sasha tried to recall. 

“No, Jean was definitely smoking,” Connie confirmed. “He choked, like a baby, and tried to tell me there was ash in my pipe.” 

“Ohh, I do remember that. Where is Jean, anyway?” Eren asked. “Not that I care, but I would’ve expected you to invite him if the rest of us are here.” He’d have preferred Annie, but Eren also recognised that while they were all friends with her, she wasn’t usually considered to be part of their core friend group, mostly because she only rarely ate with them. 

Also, that might get a little awkward, considering Eren had slept with her. She seemed to not really think much of that experience, but Annie was also precisely the type of person to make subtle digs at his lacklustre performance in front of Levi, and consequently in front of their friends and Levi’s family. Yeah, probably better off that Annie wasn’t here. 

“Jean has a _date_ ,” Connie replied. “Apparently with someone from Amherst.” 

“Amherst? That sounds just like Jean,” Eren said, to a chorus of snorting laughs at Jean’s expense. It was an old stereotype, that Amherst students were stuck-up and emotionally distant, which Jean sometimes tended to be, though he was getting better. Eren had met several Amherst students, usually ones who were taking some classes at Wall, who defied that stereotype, so he certainly knew better, but in the end his commitment to ripping into Jean won out over not being an asshole. 

“Eren, that’s mean,” Armin said, from between chuckles. 

“She’s cute, though,” Sasha said. “They’re Facebook friends, so I’ve seen a couple of her pictures.”

“Who?” Connie asked. “Jean’s going out with a guy.”

“Oh. I thought it was the girl with the white hair who looks like a fairy.”

“No, no ‒ she’s from Smith. He _was_ gonna ask her out, but she’s gay.” 

“Of course,” Sasha said, and they all nodded sagely. Smithies, like Wallies, were frequently gay. “So what’s the guy look like?”

Connie abandoned his dish drying duties and whipped out his phone, opening up Facebook, and after a few taps showed a picture to the table. Three young men with wide smiles and half-empty beer bottles clutched in their hands posed with their arms around one another. “Take a guess which.”

“Oh, wow…” Mikasa’s mouth hung open. “Do you think Jean knows?”

Connie grinned. “I don’t think he has any idea.”

Sasha looked between them. “Wait, who is it?”

Armin, who had thus far been silent, pointed at the screen; specifically at the guy in the middle, who looked an awful lot like ‒

“Isn’t that Eren?” Sasha asked. 

Connie collapsed on the table in a screech of laughter. “That’s exactly what I thought!”

“Wait,” Eren said, still washing dishes. “Jean’s dating a guy who looks like me? Gross.”

Armin giggled into her hands. “I gotta say, though - he has good taste.” 

“You…” Eren flung a bit of water at her off his fingertips; Armin shrieked and covered her face. 

“Eren!”

“Heh.” Eren did it again ‒ but then the smile dropped from his face when Armin got out of her seat. “Oh no‒”

They wrestled at the sink for about ten seconds before Armin got her hands on the sprayer. The other three got out of the kitchen just as she managed to turn it on, spraying Eren directly in the face. 

“FUCK!” Eren tried valiantly to turn the water off, but kept missing it as Armin turned the sprayer on and off, soaking both of them. In the next room, safely out of harm’s way, Sasha and Connie were doubled over in laughter, while Mikasa recorded them on her phone. 

Unfortunately, none of them heard the footsteps coming up the stairs, or the turning of the handle on the unlocked front door. No-one noticed Levi was coming back until he opened the door, and Eren managed to finally get Armin’s hand out of his face, just as she turned the sprayer on, and a jet of water landed squarely between Levi’s eyes. 

“Shit,” Armin said, and then she gritted her teeth and winced. 

Levi blinked for a moment, standing in the open doorway, shirt wet all down the front, then he turned and closed the door. Calmly, he went to the hall closet, took out a mop, and returned, only to start soaking up the water spilled all over the floor himself. “Finish cleaning those dishes,” he said to Armin and Eren, and they did. 

“You’re not mad?” Eren asked, in a tiny voice.

“It’s just water,” Levi said. “The floor could use some cleaning anyway. You three,” He said, directed at Mikasa, Sasha, and Connie. “Pick a movie. I have Netflix. My laptop’s password is frothydongus.”

“Frothy‒” Mikasa began, and then Sasha and Connie collapsed to the floor in uncontrollable laughter. 

They ended up watching anime, because Yu-Gi-Oh! was on the recommended list and Connie considered it a tragedy that no-one else in the apartment had seen more than a few episodes of it or its abridged series. 

“Honestly, the first few episodes don’t make a lot of sense,” Connie explained. “The rules for the Duel Monsters card game weren’t really set in stone yet, and it’s not even really the _start_ of the story. But it’s still fun, even if the game is totally broken until the second season or so.”

Connie ended up falling asleep very suddenly about ten minutes in, and Sasha slumped against him near the end of the second episode. Armin succumbed to her food coma next, and Mikasa tried valiantly to keep her eyes open. During the fourth episode, Eren was dozing, and Armin awoke, startled, to the sound of Haga screaming. 

Finally, Mikasa threw in the towel and shook Sasha and Connie awake, half-dragging them to the door. “Thanks for having us,” Mikasa said, while Sasha and Connie mumbled an agreement. 

“Thanks for coming,” Levi said. He was the only one still fully awake, but he wouldn’t be for much longer. He had changed out of his wet shirt after mopping, and his sleep shirt (this time with a simple image of a chicken-flavored Cup Noodle on the front) was extremely comfortable. “Good night.”

“Night, Levi.” Mikasa shut the door behind them. 

Levi turned off the projector and shut his laptop. He locked the front door, then manhandled Armin and Eren towards the bed, helping them undress before they curled up around each other. Eren was snoring softly before Levi even lifted up the covers to get in himself, and Armin hummed happily when he scooted up against her back, his arms coming around her waist. She was out like a light as soon as she was warm. 

\---

In the morning, Eren and Armin awoke without Levi; he was in the shower after his morning run, so Armin hauled a very reluctant Eren out of bed to get ready for class. 

Levi left with them, wearing a soft beanie on his head to ward off the morning chill that had crept into his home. Eren whispered something in his ear before they headed out, too quiet for Armin to hear, and Levi nodded, saying “I’ll get everything ready when I come home.” 

“What did you ask him?” Armin asked, as they went down the stairs. Her skirt flounced around her with every step. “What are you planning?” 

“Nothing you won’t like,” Eren said, with a little bounce in his step. 

Armin flushed; she knew exactly what Eren was planning, and now Armin was going to be on edge the whole day thinking about it. She couldn’t really complain, though; the anticipation would probably make it all the better in the end. 

Then again, did Armin really think she could be _unsatisfied_ with Eren’s tongue in her ass? Not really. And she couldn’t complain about the anticipation, because it kept her excited. Happy-excited, not aroused-excited (though she was, a little bit). 

Today would be their last Friday before finals, which meant the last studio session for Anatomy for the Artist. Levi agreed to make one last appearance in the class, both in the morning and afternoon studio sessions, to round out the semester’s ups and downs, though he staunchly refused to provide any modelling even if his body was mostly free of hickies this time. 

Levi had actually helped Professor Shadis come up with the idea for this last class’s drawing time. In the past he would usually just do a random model, make it exactly like every other studio meeting, but Shadis wanted to do something different this year. He had met with each of the students in the last week to talk about their work, specifically interested in finding out what they felt they had the most trouble with drawing. He then assigned them into groups with one of three models, whose body types had something in common with the students’ weaknesses. 

Shadis hadn’t told Levi any of those weaknesses, so Levi was going in to the class with only his own eyes to discern what each student needed to focus on. 

Farlan and Isabel were already in the classroom when they arrived; Levi had brought them to his office after his run, before he went home to shower and get properly dressed, and he’d asked Shadis to lead them to the room, as he too was a man of habit who woke up at an alarmingly early hour every day and came to the art building before the main doors even opened. 

Levi greeted his siblings and started explaining to them what the class was about. “I’m not actually teaching this class, but I’ve helped out with a few studio meetings. They’ve been learning anatomy, from the bones out, but in a figure drawing sense rather than a scientific one. Mondays and Wednesdays they have lectures, and Fridays they have a studio session to take what they’ve learned the past week and apply it to observational drawing. It’s a traditional approach, but Keith doesn’t expect a classical style, just proper anatomy and clear observation. Some of the students draw more classically; some have developed more illustrated, interpretative styles and gravitate towards that on their more polished drawings. Most of the students aren’t actually in the Art program, but have an interest in art.” 

“What materials are they using?” Farlan asked. 

“Mainly charcoal and wide pencils, which we recommend, but there are a few students who prefer to use ink. For foundation classes like this one we generally expect students to use a wide drawing utensil; no fine point pens or mechanical pencils until they get to detail. The paper is usually newsprint, but for longer drawings they’ll use sketch. It’s a little rougher than printer paper, but about the same weight. All eighteen by twenty-four inches.”

“So are the wide tools to help them fill the page?” Farlan asked.

“Exactly,” Levi said. “Some are better at it than others.”

“Izzy wants to know what you do here.”

“I’ve been the model a couple times, but for the most part when I’m here I critique the students’ work, tell them what needs improvement, that sort of thing.”

“So are you scary here too?” Farlan asked, jokingly.

“I think I’m nicer here than in the classes I teach myself. It’s foundational; most of the students need a lot of work, and they know it. They wouldn’t be taking this class if they were totally sure of themselves.”

“”Does that mean we get to observe Sweet Levi?”

“No,” Levi said, with emphasis. “I may not be outright yelling, but I’m not sweet either.”

\---

After class, Eren and Armin headed to their old dorm building, along with their group of friends from class, for lunch. Levi stayed in the art building with his siblings; he’d brought some leftovers with him for the three to share in his office. 

As was common near the end of any semester, the dining halls were putting out a mix of seemingly random foods that didn’t quite form a cohesive meal, because they had to empty out the storage areas before graduation and the summer session, during which only a select few dining halls would be open. Today’s banquet consisted of shepherd’s pie, kielbasa, mac ‘n’ cheese, and string beans. It was all rather tasty, but then again, everyone was hungrier than normal from the end-of-semester stresses. 

Eren loaded up a plate with a little of everything; Armin passed over the string beans for some fresh vegetables from the salad bar. They sat down across from Sasha and Connie, who were talking about food. Jean joined them a moment later, taking a seat at Connie’s left. 

“I definitely love the double-meat thing,” Connie was saying, as if in response to an unheard question from Sasha. “But there’s nothing quite like stuffing your face full of pasta slathered in four different sauces and covered in a cup or two of cheese when you’ve got a final in an hour and you haven’t slept since you last had class.”

“Amen,” Armin said, folding her hands together as if in prayer. “May the pasta gods deliver us unto straight A’s.” 

“Straight A’s? I’m hoping for straight C’s,” Connie said. 

Armin grimaced. “Me too, honestly. College is fucking hard.” 

“You? That sounds like bullshit.” Connie leaned across the table. “Aren’t you one of those people who graduated high school with like a 4.5 GPA?”

“No, I had a 3.8 I think. But high school and college are two completely different things, I’m sure you know that. It takes a different way of thinking about what I’m learning. I’m basically re-teaching myself how to study.” Armin stabbed a kielbasa slice with her fork and brought it to her lips. “Going from straight A’s to just passing is… pretty hard to deal with sometimes.” She took a bite, and chewed on her thoughts. 

“Huh. I guess I always pegged you for the type that doesn’t need to try.”

Armin shook her head, and swallowed. “Mikasa used to be like that, but not me. I was always the study-til-you-drop type. She’s having it hard now too, I think.”

Sasha nodded. “She is. I think she’s doing well, but she’s definitely overworking herself sometimes.” 

“Who’s overworking herself?” Mikasa asked, sitting down across from Sasha, on Eren’s left.

“You are.”

Mikasa opened her mouth to reply, but then just sighed and nodded. She slumped down over the table. “It only gets harder later on, though. If I get ahead now, I can make it easier on myself when the pressure’s really on.”

“Or you’ll burn out…” Armin said, hesitantly as she didn’t want to discourage Mikasa.

Mikasa grimaced. “Well, at least when I burn out I’ll already be done with my major.”

“Careful with that,” Jean said. “I don’t wanna tear you down, or anything, ‘cause I know this is important to you. But, you might change your major later, and it could feel like a waste.”

“I could just add on the second one, instead of switching,” Mikasa reasoned. 

“Not always. I mean, I just last-minute switched majors ‒”

“To Art?” Eren asked. 

“To _Sociology_ , get off my ass about it, please.” Jean clenched his jaw, then breathed out to let it go. “I thought I’d be able to just drop the Art minor and double-major with Gov’, but some of my classes can’t go towards both majors, and I don’t have enough time to take more than the remaining Soc’ classes. So I had to pick one, and the other would be a minor. I even have to take two over the summer at UMass to catch up.”

“So you’re not even minoring in Art anymore?” Eren asked. 

“Not on paper, since we can’t double-minor. I still have more than enough classes for it.”

“I just don’t see why ‒” Eren began, but Jean cut him off. 

“Art doesn’t mean the same thing to me that it does to you. I don’t want it to be my career. I love art, and I have a lot of respect for people who make art, and for people like you who want to make it your whole life. But for me, it’s something I do for fun. I mean, Sasha and Connie don’t get on your case when you cook for fun, but that’s their major. You don’t criticise Armin, or Mikasa, or anyone else in our class who isn’t an Art major. Why me?”

“Well, I don’t like you,” Eren said plainly. 

“But you give my not being an Art major as a _reason_ not to like me!” Jean gripped the edge of the table, lifting slightly from his seat to lean toward Eren. “Do you not realise how fucking hypocritical this is?” 

“It’s not. You don’t get it.” 

“Then explain, because I’m getting really tired of you.” 

Eren started to get out of his seat, but Armin and Mikasa dragged him back down, holding him tightly in place. “Jean, please sit down,” Armin said, voice even but eyes glistening. “You two can talk about this civilly, or you can take it outside where none of us have to listen to you tear into each other’s insecurities.” 

Eren leaned back and crossed his arms, staring at his plate. Jean sat down as well, and chose the ceiling to feast his own eyes upon. 

“Are you going to say anything, Eren?” Mikasa asked.

He looked at her, incredulous. 

“It sounds to me like you’re in the wrong here.” For Mikasa to say that, when she was usually so hyper-defensive of Eren, meant a lot. 

Eren’s jaw dropped; he felt betrayed, and it showed. He blinked, squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them Mikasa could see his lashes were wet. “He’s so… condescending.”

“When have I ever ‒” Jean began. 

“Right now. You question every damn thing that comes out of my mouth, like you think I’m completely incapable of calling you out for something true. You’re condescending, and full of yourself, and you play it safe in everything you possibly can but act like you’re the bravest asshole on the planet. And I hate you for it.

“But you wanna know what made me hate you first? It’s that you’re better than me.”

“That doesn’t ‒ _what_?!” Jean finally met Eren’s eyes, just to stare at him like he head three heads. 

“When I first met you, I was so excited to see your art. You were so good; much better than me. I thought you were incredible. And then you said you didn’t want to spend your life on it, and that hurt. When I look at you, I see someone who I could’ve looked up to, throwing away the only thing I’m good at, like it doesn’t even matter to you. So yeah, I don’t like you very much. I don’t like being belittled, or looked down on, and I don’t think I’m wrong to say that.” 

“Is that why you reacted the way you did to the ‘stupid’ thing?” Jean asked. 

Eren bristled, but then calmed a bit when he realised Jean was asking sincerely. “Sort of. I’d react that way to anyone who said that. That word, and anything that means the same ‒ it’s belittling, and there’s so much violence, literal violence attached to any language about intelligence. I would have thought you’d know better; if not about the language, than at least about how to not be an asshole when I asked you to stop using it.” 

“Can we talk about this more?” Jean asked. “Not now, but at some point. I don’t really get what you’re saying about violence, but I don’t know where to start.”

“You can start with a little research on insane asylums, but sure, we can talk more.” Eren was reluctant to do so, because he didn’t like Jean any more after this conversation and doubted it would change, but he couldn’t ignore the sincerity behind Jean’s attempt to be better, at least in this one case. 

“I think we have some insurmountable problems,” Jean said. “You won’t be satisfied until I change my major, and I can’t do that.”

“I never expected there would be a way to fix it.” Eren pushed back his hair; it was falling in front of his eyes, and he definitely needed it trimmed, especially since the bleached parts looked a kind of sickly yellow with the roots grown in as much as they were. He let out a frustrated sigh. “Sorry, I don’t really hate you. I shouldn’t have said that. I guess I find some things about you… admirable. You do nice things for me, sometimes. But you’re infuriating, and I don’t like you, and I don’t want to be your friend, even if you think of me that way.”

“ _Yikes_ ,” Sasha whispered, under her breath. Still, everyone at the table heard her, and all, Eren included, agreed. 

“That’s fine,” Jean said. He bit his lower lip, chewing slightly on the steel rings pierced through. “Now I know. I still think you’re an asshole, but I get why.” 

The one to break the tension was Annie, who sat down next to Mikasa and set her homemade lunch on the table. “Wow, what the fuck happened to make you all look so serious? Eren, you’ve got your murder face on, chill.”

“Eren and Jean just talked out their feelings,” Armin reported. 

“Oh, thank god, can we all eat together without them biting each other’s heads off now?”

Eren doubted it; so did Mikasa and Armin. But he was going to try, at least, because even if Jean pissed him off to no end, his friends deserved better. 


	57. I've Got A Tricycle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin and Mikasa go to therapy. Eren, Armin, and Levi go to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mention/use of enemas, but not explicitly described. practice safe ass-eating, yall. use of sex toys… delayed orgasm… fun times this chapter. umm… more awkward sex too.
> 
> there’s also some internalised transmisogyny and unfortunate medical terminology throughout the first quarter, but it’s pretty minimal as far as therapy sessions go. 
> 
> chapter title from “side to side” by ariana grande and nicki minaj.

“Hey, Grandpa.” Armin could almost hear her grandfather’s pleased smile through the phone. 

_“Morning, Armin. You don’t usually call on Fridays.”_

It was true. While Fridays weren’t particularly busy days for Armin, she preferred to call once or twice earlier in the week and once on the weekend. “I kind of wanted to tell you something.”

_“Oh? Something wrong?”_

“No, nothing’s wrong. Just, um, I have an appointment with a therapist today.” 

Mikasa, a warm presence next to Armin on the bus stop bench, leaned into her.

_“Really? What about?”_

“I’m thinking of transitioning. You know, with, um, gender… things.” Armin didn’t know how technical to get, how much her grandfather would understand. 

_“I see. I didn’t think that was really in the cards for you.”_

“Are you… disappointed?” Armin hated to ask, because she didn’t want to know, but she had to. 

_“No, of course not!”_

Armin breathed a sigh of relief. 

_“I’m just surprised, is all. Is this for hormones or surgery? -- if you don’t mind me asking.”_

“Uh. Hormones, eventually. Not surgery. I didn’t think you’d know anything about this.”

_“I don’t know much, but I looked it up on the computer, a little bit.”_ There was a bit of a staticky noise, and Armin guessed that her grandfather was scratching his face. _“Will you need money?”_

“No, Grandpa. I still have the room and board refund, I’ve barely touched it. And my insurance covers the therapy, and most of the hormones when it’s time to start them.

_“So all you need is my support, then?”_

“I guess so.”

_“Well, you have it. Always.”_

“Thanks. I love you, Grandpa.”

_“Love you too, Armin.”_

\---

The bus to Florence was, unfortunately, not included on the free rides given by campus IDs, but the fare was low. Armin and Mikasa sat near the front, in forward-facing seats, with Armin by the window. 

“Nervous?” Mikasa asked. 

“Mm-hm,” Armin nodded. Her hands were shaking slightly, and she clasped them together in her lap. 

“It’s gonna go well. And I’ll be right there with you the whole time.” 

“Thanks.” 

Armin wasn’t nervous about the visit, precisely. Well, she was, but only about as much as any doctor’s visit. The bulk of her nerves had concerns that were a bit more distant. How long would she need to be in counselling before she could get hormones? Would she even like being on hormones when that day came? And then a thought she always tried to push aside, but couldn’t completely ignore: what if she was faking it all along? What if she wasn’t a woman at all, just some kind of messed-up fetishist --

Mikasa’s hand came down over Armin’s white-knuckled ones, gentle, reassuring. Armin’s mind quieted. Never was Armin more grateful for Mikasa’s empathy superpowers than this moment. 

The waiting room of the therapy offices felt much like any other doctor’s office. There were a few magazines scattered on various side tables; uniform gray chairs were arranged in two rectangles in the waiting area. The walls had a few landscape paintings, rather than advertisements of services like Armin was used to, and some pamphlet racks with more in-depth information sat on the counter. 

Armin went to the check-in counter, and Mikasa trailed close behind her, picking a pamphlet off the desk that was titled “LGBT Services”. 

The secretary handed Armin a few forms to fill out before her two o’ clock appointment. “The first form is all legal and health insurance information,” she explained. “The second is medical history in case we need to prescribe anything for you, the third is a HIPAA form, and the fourth is optional for preferred name, gender identity, and forms of address. The last page asks about why you’re here; it’s short and not very in-depth, but we use it as a starting point. If you feel it doesn’t convey what you need from us, you can also opt-out of filling it out at this time, but your counselor may use it during your meeting today and in the future, if you decide to continue with us.” 

“Thank you,” Armin said. 

“You’re welcome. Just bring that up when you’re done, and we’ll call you when your counselor is ready to see you.” 

“Legal information,” Armin mumbled as she sat down next to Mikasa, who was reading through the pamphlet she’d picked up. Armin sighed. She filled in her name, birthdate, and home address, then ticked the box marked “M” with a grimace. It wasn’t new, but that didn’t make it any easier. 

Armin handed in the completed forms with about five minutes left before her appointment. 

“I’m really proud of you,” Mikasa murmured. “I’ll be right here the whole time, okay?”

“You don’t have to wait, you can go do something if you want.” Armin felt kind of bad expecting her to just sit here for the whole hour. 

“No, I’m good.” Mikasa wanted Armin to have someone who had her back, in case something went wrong during her conversation with the therapist. He came highly recommended by PP, Wall College’s counseling services, and the local queer facebook group that Armin and Mikasa followed. “Maybe next time.” 

“Ms. Arlert?” a man called from a door next to the check-in desk. Behind him was a short hallway, leading to the private counseling offices. 

Armin stood, her hands twitching towards her hair, fixing it minutely. “That’s me.”

The therapist held out his hand for her to shake. “I’m Dr. Darius Walbrunn. Nice to meet you.” He didn’t quite smile, but his eyes were soft and kind. Though there was really no resemblance -- he was taller, stockier, and darker-skinned -- his black hair and tired gray-blue eyes reminded Armin of Levi, and that comforted her somewhat.

Armin followed Dr. Walbrunn down the short hallway; his office was at the very end, a corner office with a leafy indoor plant on either side of the door. He let Armin in first, then closed the door behind himself. 

The room was rather small; in one corner was a standing desk, with windows on either side. A large, abstract oil painting took up most of the wall that the door they’d just come through was on. In the corner opposite the desk was a small sofa and two comfortable-looking chairs. More plants were all over the place, leafy and flowering alike, and the air in the room smelled clean despite the windows being closed for privacy. 

“Take a seat wherever you'd like,” Dr. Walbrunn said. 

Armin took one of the arm chairs, settling herself into it rather awkwardly. She still wasn’t entirely used to moving around in a skirt. 

“Comfortable?” 

“I’m fine,” Armin answered. 

“Would you like some tea?” Dr. Walbrunn offered. “Today I have green, jasmine, and an herbal blend with rose petals.” 

“Um, sure,” Armin said. “Rose petals?” 

Dr. Walbrunn nodded and flicked the switch on his electric kettle, pulling out two square ceramic cups from a cabinet between them. He set the cups on top of the cabinet, then sat down in the chair across from Armin. He picked up a clipboard that rested against the side of the cabinet, which held some of Armin’s forms; the one with her preferred forms of address, and the one that explained why she was there. “It says that you’re here for transition-related therapy. That’s so?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Please, call me Darius.” Darius flipped the page up and took a pen out of the clip; he clicked it open. “Why don’t you tell me a little about your gender?”

“Uh. Well, I’m a woman.” Armin shrugged. “I’ve been pretty much sure of that since I was a kid. I don’t really, um, need therapy to feel okay about it. I know who I am.”

“So you’re very confident in your gender?”

“Yes.”

Darius nodded. “That’s good to hear. I admire that. What are you planning for in terms of your transition?”

Armin took a deep breath; she nearly sighed it out, but it caught in her throat first. “I’m interested in hormone replacement, for the time being.”

“Might you eventually want surgery?”

“I… haven’t decided,” Armin lied. 

Darius paused in his writing and met her eyes. “I don’t mean to question your responses, but I want to let you know you can be honest with me. I’m not interested in blocking your path to transition.” 

“Oh.” Armin hesitated. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, without amending her earlier statement. 

“Alright. So I’ll put this down as ‘hormone replacement for certain, leaving options open for genital surgery.’” He paused, then asked a new question. “How long have you been living as a woman?”

“I’ve been out for about four months.” In that moment it hit Armin how fast it seemed, to only be out for a matter of months and then show up to therapy asking for hormones. She cringed. 

“And are you out completely, or just in certain situations?”

“I’m out to my friends, my family, my professors… There are some people I haven’t told yet, I guess, but I’m not really around them much so it hasn’t ever come up.” Armin’s hands twitched in her lap, clutching at her skirt. 

“Tell me a bit about your friends and family. Good relationships?”

Armin blinked. Was this a test? “Um, they’re very supportive of me. My grandfather is my only family, and he’s new to the idea of being transgender, but he’s very supportive. My, um, my boyfriend’s sister is actually the one who brought me here -- the three of us have kind of grown up together, and they’ve been behind me on all this…” She waved her hands a bit, not sure how to end that sentence. 

“That’s good. What do you and your friends do?” 

“I guess… we… Well, we’re in college, so we do college student things I guess. We don’t go to a lot of parties --” _We went to drag ball_ , Armin thought, and tried to hide another cringe when she thought how that might sound. “But we do homework together, especially for classes we share. We’ve always been pretty close; My boyfriend, Eren, and I have been friends since we were babies; his family adopted Mikasa and she just fit right in. I was in a musical with Mikasa, um, she’s the one who came with me today.”

“What musical?” Darius asked. He seemed genuinely interested; Armin wondered if he liked musicals himself. 

“Rocky Horror,” Armin said, and immediately snapped her mouth shut. _Fuck. Way to hit a stereotype, Armin._

“Hm. I’ve seen the film, but not the show. Do you enjoy theatre?”

“I guess so.” 

“What other interests do you have?”

Armin stared at him. “Does this, um, have anything to do with my transition?”

“No, but you seemed nervous.” Darius made eye contact with her, his eyebrows raising. “Would you rather stay on topic?” 

“I-I mean, don’t you need to ask a bunch of questions?”

“Not that many.” Darius glanced down at his page of notes, then back up at Armin. 

“I thought this was supposed to take months,” Armin said. She’d looked it up - most transition-related therapy involved months, maybe even years of visits before a reference to an endocrinologist might be made. 

“I will need to see you for a few months, yes, to make sure you settle into any lifestyle changes comfortably. But the actual requirements, legal and ethical, for getting you the medical care you need are much more minimal than that.” Darius tipped up his clipboard. “We’re already about halfway through what I need to know in order to refer you to a prescriber.” 

“Oh.” 

“So, tell me about your interests. Are you in college?” 

Armin nodded. “I’m a history major. Technically undeclared.” 

“Interesting. I was a double-major once upon a time. History and psychology. How do you like it?”

“I enjoy it a lot actually. I haven’t decided how I want to specialise yet, but even the general classes are interesting.”

“That’s good.”

Armin talked a little more with Darius about herself, about Eren and Mikasa and her other friends, a very little bit about Levi when Darius implied he wouldn’t judge her relationships. With about ten minutes left, Darius went back into the questions they hadn’t covered -- Armin was surprised to notice that she’d spoken for about a half hour, completely off-topic. 

“What are you hoping to get out of hormone replacement?” Darius asked. 

Armin pinched her face for a moment; she often found it awkward to talk about her body, even if she’d prepared for this. “Mostly, um, breast growth? Not, like, a whole lot. And I think there’s some fat redistribution that happens, I’d kind of like that if I ever put on any weight.” 

“There usually are some weight fluctuations with hormones, but it’s hard to say in which direction it will go.” 

“Yeah, I-I heard. I don’t know what I can really expect in terms of my voice, or my bone structure, but I guess I’m already pretty androgynous in those respects. I don’t get a lot of facial hair, but that probably won’t last, considering my family, and that’s something I’d like to avoid if I can.” 

Darius wrote this down, then asked, “Are you sexually active?”

“Um. Is that relevant?”

“It can be. Hormone replacement usually hinders sexual performance; rarely, it will increase performance, libido, and sensitivity, but usually the opposite. It is often temporary, but it’s something you will need to work with your endocrinologist on if that’s something that is important to you.” Darius held eye contact; it didn’t make him uncomfortable at all to talk about sex, which Armin appreciated, as it made her a little less nervous. 

“Okay. Well, um, I am sexually active.”

“With both of your partners?”

“Yes.”

“And you’d like to continue that?”

“Ideally, yes…” Armin trailed off, her cheeks pinking. Darius didn’t mind at all, just wrote it down. 

Darius asked a few more questions, and then they were done. “Well, I can refer you to Florence Endocrine and Neurobiology at their earliest opening, if that works for you. They’re just down the street, next to the bank.”

“That’s fine,” Armin said. 

“All right, then. I’ll have them call you in the next few days. A word of advice: assuming your current hormone levels show no concerning irregularities, they will give you your prescription regardless when you visit, but I’ve heard some trans women find the doctors will hassle them if they wear pants or any articles of men’s clothing.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks for letting me know.” By which Armin meant, _I’m definitely going to wear a dress, and also borrow Levi’s bra again._

Darius nodded. “You’re welcome. And you can make your next appointment with me at the counter in front; I’d like to see you every other week while you’re around. It doesn’t seem like you’ll need more than that, but we can do more often if it turns out not to be enough. During the summer, we can pause, or I’m willing to do Skype sessions with you if you’d like.” 

“Okay,” Armin said. “Um, I think I’ll decide on the summer when it gets closer. I’m staying in the area for a few weeks after classes end anyway.” 

“That’s fine. I’ll see you in two weeks, then, Armin.”

Armin left the office frowning, her eyebrows creasing in the middle. 

“How did it go?” Mikasa asked, jumping up from her chair. 

“Really well. Like, unexpectedly well.” After a moment, Armin looked up from the floor to meet Mikasa’s eyes. “I’ve got a referral.” 

“Already?” 

“Yeah. I thought the same thing.” 

Armin confirmed her next appointment, for two Fridays later, or the last day of finals; luckily her only final exam was self-scheduled, and she planned to take it on the first day just like last semester. Then she left with Mikasa, and headed for the bus stop near the intersection. 

They got off the bus in town, further out than usual, near the train overpass so that they could stop and get bubble tea on the way back. Mikasa got coconut milk tea with tapioca bubbles, and Armin got pineapple tea with lychee jelly. 

“You know,” Mikasa said, as they walked down Main Street, teas in hand, “the pineapple thing doesn’t work immediately. You have to give it a day or so.” 

“Pineapple thing?”

“Yeah, the thing where it makes your cum taste good.” Mikasa paused, snorting into her hand when Armin squeaked and shoved her in embarrassment. “You should know that better than me.”

“I _do_ know that, I wasn’t trying to do that! I just wanted pineapple, oh my god. How would you -- you don’t even know if I’m having sex tonight!”

“Aren’t you?” Mikasa asked, not missing a beat. 

“That’s not the _point_!” Armin shouted, very red in the face. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Mikasa said, amused despite her genuine apology. “You don’t need to be so embarrassed; I’m not teasing you. I’m happy for you.”

“Ugh…” Armin hid her face in her hands, one still holding her bubble tea, and Mikasa steered her away from walking into someone. 

“I mean it. I’m happy you’re happy, and that you’re enjoying yourself.”

“For an asexual, you sure are comfortable talking about sex,” Armin grumbled. 

“I think it’s the detachment,” Mikasa said. “And the, like, non-specificity. If you told me in explicit detail what you do in bed, I’d probably get uncomfortable. Besides,” she continued, gesturing with her bubble tea, “lots of asexuals love talking about sex. I may be personally sex-repulsed, but I’m still happy for you.” 

“Mmn,” Armin hummed in reluctant acknowledgement. She nodded, and sipped her drink. 

“So, _are_ you having sex tonight?”

Armin let a moment pass, and then a few more, but finally she nodded, just enough for Mikasa, who was staring at her waiting for an answer, to see. 

Mikasa clapped her on the back, carefully avoiding a moment that Armin was swallowing. “Good for you,” she said. “You drink the fuck out of that pineapple tea.” 

\---

Eren could not for the life of him pay attention to his afternoon class. 

It was Digital Art, a class he had thus far excelled in -- not because it was easy. It wasn’t easy. It was just that Eren had already done everything they covered; he was familiar with the basics of photo editing and animation, at the very least. And today was the first day of final presentations, meaning the room was dark and he didn’t need to do a thing. 

Rather than sleep, however, as many other students were wont to do, he simply curled his legs up on his chair in the back of the room and hoped no-one could read his mind as he let it roam free to imagine the night ahead of him. 

(Sex. He was thinking about sex.) 

There was a problem making itself known in his pants, so he hugged his legs tighter, thinking that would maybe choke off the blood flowing into his dick. 

It definitely didn’t help that two of the students had chosen to present the work of photographers who got their start in erotic photography, and after warning the class of sexual content they started off their presentations with literal porn images projected eight feet wide. 

One might think Eren was used to such things, being that his boyfriend’s apartment was filled with the man’s own larger-than-life paintings of genitals, as well as the ever present equally-large painting of his nude girlfriend, and the comically oversized novelty dildo possibly permanently taking up residence as the kitchen table’s centerpiece, but it didn’t help. At all. Instead his mind went from creampie photo to Levi’s paintings to Levi and Armin screaming for his dick, and yeah, that the-opposite-of-helped his pants problem. 

Luckily (?) the final presentation of the day involved graphically violent human-animal hybrid photomanipulations, so Eren was able to walk to his dining hall work shift without a zoom lens in his pocket. 

Said dining hall work shift was… not much better. 

Eren shoveled food into his mouth in record time, barely sparing Armin more than a “hello.” Which, considering he had plans to have his tongue in her ass for a good portion of the evening, he thought was perfectly acceptable. Clearly, he would be making up for it later. Eren took dishwashing duty, resigning himself to scraping gravy off plates for the chance to hide Cock Wars Episode VI Return Of The Boner behind a soaked apron and the industrial sinks. 

Armin wasn’t fooled, but then again, it wasn’t Armin the he was hiding from. 

“You are too easily turned on,” Armin teased during a lull, chuckling. “This is probably why you always come so fast. It’s too easy to get you worked up.”

“Well, I can’t help it! You’re here, and you, you know, exist.” 

“Levi doesn’t have this problem,” Armin commented. 

“Levi is _thirty_ ,” Eren stressed, “and he’s been having sex a lot longer and a lot more than we have.”

Armin considered that. After a while passed, and Eren squirmed slightly, she asked, “Are you really this excited to… you know?”

“Well, yeah,” Eren mumbled. “I’ve been watching stuff--”

“Eren, you know all that stuff is fake,” Armin interrupted. 

“Amateur stuff!” Eren shouted, a little too loud, and their shift manager looked over. He dropped his voice to continue. “At least _some_ of that is real. A lot of people really seem to like it, and I know I really like it when _you_ like things, so yeah, I’m excited. It’s also, like, you asked for something Levi’s never even done. That’s…” Eren shivered. “Really hot.” 

“He said some people had done it to him,” Armin said. 

“Yeah, but he never did it to anyone else. It’s not something I’ve ever thought of before you suggested it, either. Part of it is the novelty, you know? But mostly, it’s just that it’s _you_ , and I love you.” 

Armin blushed all the way to her ears. “I love you too.” 

Eren grinned. “And that’s the best part!” 

Armin nudged him with her elbow. “Stop being so cute.”

“Aww, you think I’m cute?” Eren fluttered his eyelashes. “You’re cute too!” 

“You’re the cute one,” Armin insisted. 

“You are!”

“No, you are!” 

“No, _you_ are!” 

They went back and forth thusly until their shift manager, recently divorced and therefore understandably So Done with their sappy romantic bullshit, dropped off a bucket of dirty dishes and gave them a Look that told them to get back to work or face her wrath. 

\---

When Armin and Eren got back to the apartment, Farlan and Isabel had already returned to the hotel. Armin knocked, then opened the door when Levi shouted that it was unlocked. 

Levi was at his easel, lovingly detailing Armin’s left nipple, and naked as the day he was born, with only a hand towel over his lap to protect his intimate parts from acrylic paint. He turned his head to the pair in his doorway, with a smirk in his eyes if not on his lips, and waved at them with the twitch of a nonlatex-gloved pinky. 

Eren was stripping before Armin even got the door shut. 

“Slow down, Eren,” Levi said. 

“I can’t!” Eren shouted. “You know how fast I come! Every second is precious!” 

Armin laughed; Levi shook his head and got down from his stool, leaving his towel, gloves, pallette, and brush on top of it. He took Armin’s hand, and directed Eren in no uncertain terms -- “Stay. Here. We’ll be back in a bit.”

He led Armin to the bathroom and locked the door behind them. Levi took a deep breath. “You’re gonna hate this,” he said. 

Armin winced. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Levi assured her. “It’s just, well…” He tapped a box that sat on the sink counter. “If you want Eren to eat you out, you’ll have to take an enema.” 

Armin winced, much more intensely. “Do I have to?” 

“Well, no, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s up to you. But if you don’t, then you can’t ask him to do that. He could get sick.”

That was a good point, Armin admitted, but it still seemed… extreme. 

“Some people do it every time they do anal -- I think that’s a little excessive, even for me; as long as you’re using a condom it shouldn’t matter. But for this? Yeah, it’s necessary.” Levi fiddled with the top of the box. “It’s up to you. And, I know this sounds weird, but I can help you with it. I did mine earlier.” 

“I didn’t know you wanted this,” Armin said. 

“I don’t want Eren to eat my ass, no. But, it’s been a while since the last time I used one of these, and I wanted to make sure I could help you if you needed it. Also, it’s good for barebacking,” he added, as a slightly quieter afterthought. 

Armin gave him a look that clearly asked _what the fuck does that mean?_

“Bareback means without a condom. I thought, if Eren wants to, I don’t mind.” 

“I think Eren was kind of hoping you would put your dick in him.” Armin turned her gaze to the box, finally; it was rather nondescript, just a white box with a few blue and purple waves; the brand and other information was all in dark gray text. 

“If you don’t want to, I’m sure we can find plenty of other exciting ways to fuck,” Levi assured. “I have toys, and I can teach Eren how to muff you --”

“I want to do this though,” Armin said. “I mean, toys sound fun, and I do want you to teach Eren, but I’ve been looking forward to this all day. If getting Eren to rim me means the new most uncomfortable shit of my life, I’ll do it.”

Levi nodded. “All right then.”

“Can, um, can you help me?” Armin asked, trying to be brave about it. 

Levi nodded again, slower. “Yeah. Yep. Let’s get to work, then.”

Some time later, Eren came and knocked on the bathroom door. “You okay in there?” he asked, honestly worried. 

“We’re fine,” Levi answered, shouting through the closed door. “Go to my room and lay on the bed. We’ll be out there in a few minutes, we’re almost done here.” 

“Should I get naked or…?” 

Levi sighed. “Yes, Eren, finish taking your clothes off.” 

“Okay!” Eren went to Levi’s room, took off his clothes and neatly put them in the laundry basket, then got on Levi’s bed, arranging himself in what he hoped was a sexy manner. He heard the toilet flush, and then the shower ran for a few minutes. 

In the somewhat-privacy (“privacy” here meaning “not within Eren’s earshot”) of the shower, Armin groaned into Levi’s shoulder. 

“That was so embarrassing,” Armin groaned. 

Levi patted her hair, now damp from the shower cascading down her back. “I know. But it’ll be worth it.”

“Do you know that for sure? What if Eren’s not even good at it!”

“He’s good at blowjobs, right?”

“Yeah,” Armin agreed.

“And he’s good at kissing?”

“Definitely.”

“Then he’ll be good at eating ass,” Levi reassured. “Trust me, I’m a professional.”

Armin snorted. “You _were_ a professional.”

“Retirement doesn’t nullify a doctorate.”

Armin snickered into Levi’s neck. “Mm, Doctor Levi, I think I need a prostate exam…”

“Oh, really? Why don’t I just snap on my gloves and get out the cold medical lube and shove my fingers impersonally up your ass--”

Armin cut Levi off with a louder laugh, then groaned. “Oh, that’s so weird. I feel really empty.”

“Yeah, that’ll happen.” Levi rubbed Armin’s lower back soothingly, fingers pressing into the base of her spine, just above the swell of her ass. “You should probably clean off a little.”

“Mnf,” Armin mumbled, muffled by Levi’s skin. 

“Want help?” Levi reached for a bar of moisturising soap he had gotten specifically for these sorts of occasions (meaning, in general, sex); he usually used a liquid soap, as did Eren and Armin, but some part of him twisted uncomfortably at the idea of putting a loofah in his crack and then using it elsewhere. 

Armin’s face burned, and Levi could feel the heat against his skin. Still, she agreed, finding it slightly less embarrassing than doing it herself in front of him. 

Levi was quick about it, efficient; not lingering like he usually preferred. While he might love taking his time to clean his lovers sensually, erotically, and thoroughly, he knew it would make Armin uncomfortable in a situation like this. Hell, it would make him uncomfortable too, to have someone rubbing his ass crack all nice and slow, immediately after. Well. _That_. 

He was still thorough, though. That was important. 

“Are you gonna be okay to go to bed?” Levi asked. 

“Mhm, I think so. Once I’m, uh, clean.” 

“Let me know if you need more time.”

“Don’t wanna wait too long. I’ll just have to do it again,” Armin mumbled, not looking forward to the idea. _It’ll be worth it_ , she told herself, hoping it was true. 

“You’re good for a few hours, I think,” Levi said. He patted Armin’s ass lightly, and she made a noise in his ear. It wasn’t necessarily a good or bad noise, just sort of an acknowledging moan of feeling _something_ that was just too new to really describe. 

“Well, at least you’re sensitive now,” Levi teased. Armin made the noise again, though this time it was a little more disgruntled, not appreciating the teasing. “Come on, let’s get out and I’ll dry your hair.” 

Levi was mostly dry, having mostly kept the water on Armin’s back. Armin’s hair wasn’t too wet, mostly the ends in back, but he helped her blow dry it anyway, because dandruff was a very avoidable thing, and also, she looked extra-cute when her hair was all fluffy and silky. 

“Ready?” Levi asked.

Armin nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”

“All right.” Levi smacked her ass, not hard but enough that Armin yelped. “Get out there.”

Armin headed out, and decided as soon as she opened the bathroom door to just… not stop. If she stopped moving, she’d have to psych herself up again, and there was no point in wasting time when she could have Eren’s mouth on her. 

Armin crossed the hall, and found the door to Levi’s bedroom blessedly open, no pause needed to turn the knob. She watched Eren visibly swallow when he saw her, his shoulders tensing in anticipation, and she climbed on the bed and straddled his waist, kissing him with barely a heartbeat’s hesitation. Hands came up to cradle Eren’s face, and Armin licked into his mouth, touching her tongue to his. She felt hands on her ass, and Armin hummed and rocked back into them. 

Her embarrassment was somewhere in the vicinity of the bathroom door, discarded there as she had exited. Armin kissed Eren like she had never felt it in the first place, holding back nothing, and the hands on her ass squeezed, pulling the cheeks aside, exposing her sensitive hole to the chilly air of the bedroom. 

Armin gasped and shivered; her hands slid into Eren’s hair and held on tight, and he hissed against her lips. Her grip loosened just a bit, but she yanked when she felt his heft hand release her ass to slide his middle finger between her cheeks. 

“It’s clean!” Armin blurted out, then began to stutter. “S-so, i-if you want, you can…” She trailed off, hoping Eren would, for once, just get it without her having to spell it out for him. 

Eren looked up at Armin for a moment, their faces still so close together, then grinned. He manhandled her sideways, onto her back, and climbed on top of her, reversing their positions. “Gladly,” Eren said, then dipped his head to kiss Armin’s neck. 

He kissed his way down her chest, stopping at every point of interest that made Armin’s breath catch and release in a soft moan or whine. Eren’s hands slipped under her thighs, slowly lifting Armin’s legs and spreading them so that by the time he placed a tiny kiss on the tip of her cock (she gasped and gripped the sheets), her knees were over Eren’s shoulders. He smoothed his hands over the undersides of her thighs, kissing the right one, then the left, then gently pushed until her ass was bared to him and Armin was completely red in the face. 

“Just like kissing, right?” Eren murmured, eyes drifting closed, and then his mouth was on her. 

“ _Haah!_ ” Armin shouted, high-pitched and loud and nearly drowning out Eren’s moan. She twisted against the sheets like she’d never had anything in her ass before -- but this was _different_ , in the same way that jerking one’s own cock was different from a blowjob, in the same way that a dildo in one’s bedroom was different from getting fucked from behind on a handmade bench in a forest clearing. Nothing quite compared to Eren’s lips on Armin’s asshole, and _god_ , that was his _tongue_ \--

Still standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, Levi groaned, low in his throat and with his lips pressed tightly closed behind a fist closed just as tight. If either Eren or Armin heard him, neither acknowledged the sound. Levi’s eyelids fluttered, and blood rushed from his head to his cock. He watched Eren bury his face in Armin’s ass like he enjoyed this just as much as she did, his fingers clenched on her thighs; he watched Armin writhe on his bed, throwing her head back and forth, trying to grind against Eren’s mouth though he held her down, and listened to the whimpers and moans that fell from her lips, only interrupted by gasping breaths. 

A long groan from Armin signified Eren’s tongue had pushed inside her, breaching past her twitching hole to fuck her shallowly, and Levi could only think _this is so much better than porn_. 

Armin, were she currently disposed to rational thought, would have had a similar one; as it was, the most coherent phrases that ran through her mind were _oh god, oh my god, that’s so good, yes, Eren_ \-- and only the last two made it out of her mouth at all, the rest turning to wordless moans. 

Eren, for his part, was actually enjoying himself quite a lot; he expected the actual act to be more… unpleasant, in several ways, and made worth it only by Armin’s obvious pleasure. Certainly Armin’s pleasure was by far the best part, but it was actually… fun. Armin tasted lightly of soap and mostly of her own skin. That probably had something to do with whatever she and Levi spent so long on in the bathroom, which Eren didn’t really want to think too hard about. 

It wasn’t actually that different from kissing; Eren had expected, despite what Levi told him, that this would be completely unalike, but the motions of his lips and tongue were familiar. 

And with every swipe of his tongue and movement of his lips, another noise of pleasure ripped from Armin’s throat, and she struggled against his hands as she tried to get closer and closer to Eren’s mouth, as if he was leaving any space between them at all. 

Eren felt the bed dip beside him; Armin was too far gone to notice. Levi dropped the half-full bottle of lube next to Eren and stretched out along Armin’s side, capturing her lips. Their wet kisses barely muffled her moans, and his hands on her chest, finding sensitive spots on her ribs, her hips, below her nipples, only made her louder. 

Levi’s hand swiped over her belly, his thumb dipping into Armin’s navel briefly, and then curved over her hip, holding her close as his lips slid wetly against hers, the slick sound almost louder than Eren sucking hard kisses into the skin behind Armin’s balls, bringing red and purple pinprick bruises to the surface. 

“Fun place to leave a hickey,” Levi murmured in a quiet moment, and Eren snorted a laugh. Armin barely registered he’d said anything, only whined because Eren’s mouth wasn’t on her, and she grabbed his hair to pull him back in. 

“Okay, okay -- mmm…” Eren sucked at her hole again, and Armin’s back arched up off the bed. He pushed his tongue in, and wriggled it, and Armin jerked so violently she dislodged one of the hands holding her down and nearly kicked Eren in the head. 

“Shh,” Levi soothed, smoothing his palm over her hip. Armin had no interest in “shh”, she just grabbed his hand and moved it, putting it to better use stroking her cock. “You want to come already?”

“ _Haaaah_ ,” was all Armin could say in response, because Eren had gone back to sucking on her perineum and was pushing a lube-slick finger inside her, curling up to her prostate. 

“Someday I’ll teach you to have prostate orgasms,” Levi mumbled into Armin’s ear. He moved his mouth down to her neck, sucking more bruises to match the ones Eren was leaving between her legs. “Do you want a cock today?” Levi asked, pretty certain he wouldn’t get an answer. 

He did get one, though; Armin shook her head, and gasped out, “More.” 

Eren heard, and took that to mean “more fingers”, so he pushed in a second alongside the first. Armin’s feet came down on the bed, no longer held back by Eren’s hands, and she pushed her hips up, into Eren’s fingers and Levi’s hand. She was silent when her climax hit, hands white-knuckled around the bedsheets below her, then she let out a few breathless moans as she ejaculated onto her chest. Levi stroked her through it; Eren’s fingers still fucked slowly into her. They both stopped when her moans turned to discomfort, and Eren moved up the bed so they could cuddle Armin from either side. 

Armin’s chest heaved; she pushed hair, damp with sweat, out of her face, then let her arm fall limp against Eren’s shoulder. 

“What did you say about prostates?” Armin asked, her voice shaky.

“Huh?” Eren asked, too busy staring at Armin’s post-orgasmic glow to think properly. 

“Prostate orgasms,” Levi supplied. “I can teach you how to have them.”

“Oh,” Armin said. “I’ve heard of those. It’s like, coming without coming, right?”

Levi squinted. “...Sure. You can have more than one in a row, without stopping, and it’s dry.” 

“I’d like to try that.” She looked down at herself, seeing the mess she’s made on her chest, and her now flaccid cock that definitely would not be up for more any time soon. “Maybe later.”

Levi hummed into her neck, pleased. “It’ll take time. Maybe after your finals. You are staying for a while, right?”

“Mhm. Not long, but we are. We’ll leave a few days after graduation, I don’t -- I don’t remember the date of our train right now.” Armin let out a breathless laugh. “I can barely think. That was really… a really intense one. You did good, Eren.”

Eren grinned, basking in the praise. Armin imagined him with puppy ears, thumping a fluffy tail against the bed in joy. She laughed harder, and nudged her hand enough to scratch under his chin. He seemed to like it, which only strengthened her mental image. 

Of course, puppy Eren led to the phrase “doggy style” and Armin turned to Levi, reminded of something important -- “Weren’t you going to fuck him?” she asked. She could feel Eren perking up beside her, and not just because his cock was pressing into her hip. 

“Now?” Levi asked. “I mean, I can, but… Is it a good time?”

“Well, he’s hard now, so…” 

“Now or never!” Eren chirped. 

While Eren and Armin held back chuckles, Levi sighed and got off the bed. “Eren, would you be willing to wear a cock ring?” 

Eren dropped his smile, eyes going wide.

“You don’t have to.”

“Iwantto,” Eren said in a rush, and he smushed his very, very warm face against Armin’s shoulder. 

“Great. Get on your knees.” 

Eren scrambled onto his hands and knees, leaning over Armin. “Hi!” he said, holding her eye contact. 

“Hi,” Armin returned, giggling up at him in his excitement. 

Levi fished through his toy collection for the box of neatly separated cock rings, bypassing the two steel ones and all the fun textured ones, instead taking out a couple of plain silicone rings in slightly different sizes. He brought them to the bed and held them up to Eren’s cock, deciding to start with the middle-sized one, then he put on a nonlatex glove and lubed up Eren’s cock a bit. “Let me know if it’s uncomfortable.” He stretched out the ring a little and put it over the head of Eren’s cock, then rolled it down to the base, nice and snug up against his balls. 

Eren shifted on his knees. “Hurts a little.”

Levi took the ring off the same way he’d put it on, then tried with the slightly larger one. This was one size down from what was usually comfortable for Levi. “Better?”

“Yeah. Kind of feels nice.” Eren wiggled his butt, and Levi smacked it. “Eep!”

“Sorry. Couldn’t help it. Did I hurt you?”

“No, it wasn’t that hard. Kind of liked it…” Eren went down on his elbows, burying his head in Armin’s neck again. He groaned loudly, cursing his lack of filter. 

“Hmm. We can talk about that some other time.” There was a promise in Levi’s voice, and a shiver went up Eren’s spine. “I won’t smack you around, but that I can do for you.” 

Eren whined. “Just fuck me, please?”

Levi’s dick throbbed; it had been a long time since anyone begged him for anything sexual, and even then it hadn’t happened very often. He was generally not a particularly dominant person, but Eren sounded so _good_ …

“Are you willing to beg for it?” Levi asked, not having really chosen to let the words out, but he didn’t take them back. 

Eren let out a strangled noise into Armin’s neck, and Levi watched her bite her lips, trying to hold back laughter. “Maybe,” Eren mumbled. 

“Yes or no, Eren.” 

Fuck, Levi was using his Commanding Voice. “Yes!” Eren nearly squeaked, and shoved his face so fully into the pillow that Levi worried he might suffocate himself. He put his hand in Eren’s hair and pulled -- gently, and just to make sure he was breathing, really. Eren picked his head up with a gasp. 

“Make sure Armin can see you begging for my cock when I get you there.” Levi reached for his phone on the nightstand with his clean hand and set a timer for ten minutes; it wouldn’t be particularly safe to let Eren keep the ring on too long for his first time, but if he took a break every ten minutes or so he could probably go a while. That is, if he didn’t come as soon as Levi took the ring off, which was definitely a concern. 

Armin brushed back Eren’s hair from his face, and eagerly accepted his kiss as Levi pressed his middle finger, well-lubed and warm, into Eren’s ass. 

It wasn’t like Eren had never played with his ass before; he’d tried it a handful of times to see what Armin liked about it, and once Armin had asked to put a finger in him while they were fucking (but not more than that as it had put him over the edge even sooner than the usual). And he liked it! Quite a lot, actually, but he had kind of gotten used to being the top in most of his sexual encounters, so it surprised him a bit that Levi was even willing to do this for him. 

He also had the very real concern that he would not even last through the preparation process, considering that even with only his own fingers he was grabbing for his cock half-mindless after getting only the second one in. In theory, the cock ring would help stop that from happening, but Eren wasn’t sure how much he trusted it. Right now, it was kind of just making him feel even better. 

Levi’s finger sank in deeper, and then Eren stopped thinking. 

“Oh, that’s it,” Armin said. She tipped up her head and kissed Eren’s nose. His face was screwed up in pleasure; eyes shut tight, eyebrows drawn together, nose scrunched up, and mouth open, lips wet. A bit of drool dripped onto Armin’s cheek. “Oh, gross. Don’t slobber on me.” She covered his mouth. 

“You noticed too?” Levi asked. 

“Hm?”

“He’s like a puppy sometimes.” 

Armin smiled upwards, where Eren was panting roughly against her hand; he whined when a second finger entered him alongside the first. “He’s cute like this.” 

“He’ll be even cuter when he’s stuffed full of dick.” 

Levi spent a while getting Eren to relax, and thought him nearly ready for a third finger when his alarm went off. He withdrew his fingers and helped Eren lay back down on his side, carefully removing the cock ring so that he wouldn’t come as soon as he was released. 

Eren looked thoroughly blissed out regardless, curling around Armin like an octopus on a rock, and Armin was all too happy to cuddle him back. 

“Why’d you stop?” Eren asked, half-lucid. 

“You have to take a break from this thing,” Levi said, holding up the ring. “You can’t wear it all night, especially not your first time.”

“Hm.” Eren accepted this, and went back to lethargically cuddling Armin. 

“Don’t fall asleep,” Levi warned. 

“I won’t!” Eren said. “I want you to fuck me. I won’t fall asleep before that.”

While he waited for Eren’s erection to soften a little bit from its over-engorged cock ring state, Levi left the room to get a bottle of water for the three of them to share. Sex was hard work, after all. Exercise. Cardio. All that good stuff. 

He handed it to Armin first, who looked tired out after her very enjoyable interaction with Eren’s mouth. She drank a few gulps, then handed it back. Levi helped Eren drink some, then finished off the bottle himself. He left it on the nightstand to recycle later. 

“How are you feeling?” Levi asked, tenderly stroking Eren’s hair. 

“Mnn. Weird.” Eren wiggled his butt a little. “But good. More?”

“Let me see you.” He pushed at Eren’s hip, and Eren flopped onto his back. Eren’s erection had gone down a little, so Levi nodded. “On your knees again.” 

Levi set his timer first, then gave Eren the cock ring again; Eren whined a little when it first went on, his thighs straining with the effort it took to hold back.

Levi put on a new glove, and he waited for Armin to guide Eren into another kiss before he worked his fingers back into Eren. One went in easy; two went in easy. The third took a little bit of easing in, but Eren was relaxed and all to happy to endure a little bit of pressure. 

“‘M ready,” Eren mumbled.

“You the fuck are not. My dick may be short but it’s a lot thicker than yours.” Levi punctuated this with a particularly precise jab into Eren’s prostate; Eren cried out, muffling himself in Armin’s hair. 

“That’s right, scream for me,” Levi whispered. He pushed his fingers in all the way to his knuckles, then pulled out, and pushed in again just as deep. He spread his fingers a bit. Eren squirmed, and Levi focused to that motion, flexing his fingers and then drawing them together, testing how much he could relax Eren’s muscles. 

“I’m going to try for four. Tell me if it hurts.”

“Four?” Eren whined, but he pushed his ass back anyway. “O-okay.” 

Levi tried spreading his fingers again, and Eren grunted, clenching around him; not a good sign. 

“Eren. You need to relax. Am I hurting you?”

“Ngh. Stop.”

Levi blinked for a moment, surprised, then withdrew his fingers slowly with a wet noise. Eren breathed heavily for a moment, his lips pressing against Armin’s neck without kissing or sucking. 

Armin pet Eren’s hair, ran her fingers through the sweat-soaked strands. God, he was so _warm_ ; her right hand spread over his upper back, then slowly down the bumps of his spine, feeling him tremble with a frown on her face. “What’s wrong?” she asked, whispering oh-so-gently in his ear. 

Eren shivered. He reached a hand back towards Levi, who hesitated before taking it in his own. Eren pulled him forward to drape over his back, and Levi threw out his gross, lube-covered right hand on the bed to hold himself up, grimacing at the feeling of now-sticky duvet. 

“Touch me,” Eren whined. “Levi, you won’t touch me.”

“I had my fingers in your ass,” Levi said, confused. 

“Yeah, but, it’s so… impersonal. Like it could be anybody’s ass.” Eren wriggled against him, uncomfortable at the emptiness in his backside and the extended pressure in his balls and the heat of the room. “Talk to me. Grab my thighs, kiss me, something! Let me know it’s actually _me_ you’re thinking about while you open me up.” 

Levi stared at the back of Eren’s head; he briefly met Armin’s eyes, and she looked to the side. She had noticed too, that Levi wasn’t putting in the same care he usually did, the same care he had even a few minutes ago. 

What changed? Levi asked himself. What was making him act like he just needed to get through it, just manage until it was over? Like he wasn’t enjoying this. 

_Was_ he enjoying this? Levi took stock of himself. 

Hands: warm. 

Breathing: fast. 

Heartbeat: faster. 

Sweat: cooling on his skin. 

Dick: soft. 

Oh. 

Eren whined; he could feel Levi’s (very much soft) penis against his ass, not pressing at all, not insistent, not burning hot with need. 

“I’m sorry,” Levi whispered. “I was so focused on making you feel good that I forgot to show you my love.” He kissed between Eren’s shoulder blades, right on the vertebra that protruded in front of his lips. 

“Apologise to Armin, too,” Eren demanded. 

Levi nodded against Eren’s back, then looked at Armin. He couldn’t kiss any part of her in their current position, but his hand left Eren’s and stroked Armin’s cheek and chin. “I’m sorry, Armin. I know I made you uncomfortable, too.” 

“You’re forgiven, just do better,” Armin said, not unkindly. “I love touching Eren, but I feel like I’m doing the tender work for both of us.” 

Levi gave a single nod, then straightened his back. He ran his clean hand down Eren’s back, then grabbed Eren’s ass, hard, delighting in how it gave way under his fingers, molding to his grip like a very firm clay. 

Eren whined and jerked his hips back. “F-fuck me.”

“Soon,” Levi promised. He felt his cock respond to Eren’s moan when he pressed his three fingers to Eren’s hole, not pushing in, just rubbing. 

“Finger me, then,” Eren said, breathless. On his next exhale, Levi pushed in, and Eren’s breath turned to a loud groan. “Good, good, oh god that’s good.” 

“You look so good like this,” Levi said. Eren turned his head to look at Levi with one eye; he was blushing so hard it actually showed, his cheeks dark and red-tinted and burning against Armin’s neck. Armin’s hair spilled over the pillow, tangling with Eren’s where their heads pressed together. 

Heat exploded across Levi’s face. How could he let himself go soft with a picture like _this_ before his very eyes? He thrust his hips against Eren’s, his cock rubbing against a warm, sensitive thigh and slipping between his legs. 

Ah, right. He’d suggested intercrural, once. Eren didn’t seem to know what it was, but Levi still wanted to try. 

Another time.

Levi found it easier to spread his fingers inside Eren, this time, and he slowly worked in the fourth one. Even his smallest finger made a difference, and Eren went shock-still for a moment before letting out a loud, throaty gasp. 

“Good?” Levi asked. 

“ _Very_ ,” Eren breathed, and he let out another, similar gasp when Levi curled his fingers down. He didn’t quite catch Eren’s prostate; couldn’t, with this many fingers in, but the pressure was still good on an overstimulated Eren. 

Armin felt herself getting hard again, very slowly and not entirely comfortably. She left it be, focussing on cradling Eren’s face, but wondered what it would feel like to have Eren fuck her so soon after licking her open. Armin would have to finger herself, first; Eren wasn’t lucid enough for it and Levi was otherwise occupied. 

The lube was well within reach… 

Levi leaned forward to pepper kisses along Eren’s back, his eyes fluttering shut, as he rubbed his cock against Eren’s thighs and finger-fucked him, waiting out the rest of the timer because he wasn’t hard enough to fuck Eren yet, and Eren wouldn’t last if he did. 

Armin took advantage of his distraction and picked up the lube, smearing it over her fingers, making a mess she hoped Levi would forgive her for. She reached down between her body and Eren’s, pushing two fingers inside herself. There was a slight discomfort, but not for long; she was used to starting with two anyway, and the relaxed feeling of a recent orgasm helped. She didn’t bother with gloves, because if Armin was clean enough for a mouth then she was clean enough for her own fingers, she decided, and she knew from experience that Eren found it infinitely sexier when she fingered herself this way. Not that he really needed the help, considering the nearly painful swelling of his cock. 

The timer went off, and Eren whined. “You’re going to fuck me next time,” he demanded, and Levi nodded against his back, breathing heavy now that he’d been dragging his cock along Eren’s body for the last few minutes. He pulled back, carefully removing the ring, while Eren squeezed tight around the base of his cock until the pressing need to come Right Now Immediately faded.

“So good,” Levi whispered, his hands, now both bare, grabbing briefly at Eren’s ass in an entirely superfluous reward. 

“Levi, don’t -- I’ll come --!” Eren whined, but he grit his teeth and rocked back when Levi’s hands left him. 

Eren flopped down on his side, noticing only then that his knees were sore, but not sore enough that he wouldn’t get back on them if Levi asked. He also noticed, only then, that Armin had three fingers in her ass, already almost ready to take him in if he wanted. 

And god, did he _want_ , but he was pretty sure he would burst right through the cock ring if he fucked her at this point. He also had no idea if he could wear a condom with the ring on, and that was clearly a pretty important part. 

Levi groaned at the sight of Armin fucking herself on her fingers, the tiniest of whimpers escaping her lips as her hips rocked and stuttered on the bed. 

“Can I?” Levi asked, and without even letting him elaborate Armin nodded. She withdrew her fingers and grabbed the slats on the headboard. Levi wet his fingers, noting that they had used a _lot_ of lube today and he should probably buy more, but that wasn’t important right now -- he pushed his fingers into Armin and watched her hips lift off the bed as she tried to grind against his hand. 

“W-why does she get bare fingers and I don’t?” Eren asked, surprised he was even aware enough to notice the difference. 

“Tell you later,” Levi said. Though Eren probably could have used the calm-down that the information would bring, it was not really bedroom material. 

“Are you gonna fuck her?”

Levi shook his head, barely blinking as he drove his fingers into Armin. Her cries nearly drowned him out. “No. We don’t- we don’t do that.” We do plenty without it, he didn’t say; it felt weird when we tried, he didn’t say. “Do you want to?”

“I’ll explode. My dick will just fucking --” Eren punctuated this with a very recognisable sound effect, and his hands making little fireworks gestures. “Goodbye, Little Eren.”

“Your dick won’t literally explode.”

“You don’t know that,” Eren insisted. 

Levi ignored that statement. “But do you _want_ to?” 

Eren didn’t even need to think about it. “Of course I do.”

“Armin?”

Armin nodded rapidly. “Yes, yes!” She wasn’t usually quite so enthusiastic about it; she did prefer fingering, after all. But right now she wanted to feel Eren’s cock, fully swollen for once as he had something holding him back long enough for it to happen, filling her up completely. 

And maybe, if she could hold back long enough, Levi could finger her again after? Eren would be no use, he tended to fall asleep after coming or at least turn into a rock, unable and unwilling to move. Levi had some experience with marathon sex, and the stamina to keep going after coming much more than Armin or Eren did. He could probably do it. 

If he fingered Armin with Eren’s cum still inside her --

Armin whined, loudly, as that fantasy coincided with Levi’s fingers curling up in just the right spot. “ _AH!_ Levi, Levi, right there!” 

“Armin…” Levi said her name so low he was almost growling. “Armin, Armin. Fuck, you look good. You feel good. You’re so warm. So wet.”

Levi’s thumb pressed up hard behind her balls, rubbing in circles. Armin wasn’t as quick to come as Eren, and had already done so once, so he could stand to do a little more with her, and she could take it without going over the edge too soon. He was searching, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to fit his thumb, not yet -- ah, there. 

Armin bucked her hips up when she noticed what Levi was looking for. “N-not now. It’s good, but, not now.” 

“Mn,” Levi acknowledged, moving his thumb away from the dip he’d once sunk his little finger into, but still rubbed the skin, in wider circles, three fingers curling up into her walls. 

He withdrew his fingers when he had Armin panting, clearly edging into overstimulation, which she definitely liked but also definitely meant it was time to get Eren back on board. Levi wiped his hand on the already thoroughly messy duvet, as well as he could, then reached for a condom. “Eren,” he began, and Eren was already rolling onto his knees, groaning, before Levi could ask. 

Armin’s heart raced when she pulled Eren down to her, kissing him messy on the mouth. She felt around on the bed for the cock ring, having figured out how to put it on him after watching Levi do it twice, and stretched it over the head of Eren’s cock. She rolled it down his shaft, as far down as it could go, and then stroked her hand over his cock a few times, appreciating the hardness against her palm. Eren groaned into her mouth, fucking into the circle of her fingers. 

“Fuck me, Eren,” Armin requested, barely breaking her mouth from his. “Please. Just like this, no condom.” 

“I can’t…” Eren said, but he really really wanted to, and it wouldn’t take much convincing. The three of them were all tested and he didn’t hear any protests from Levi. 

“Please, I need it,” Armin whispered, and Eren was convinced. 

He pushed into her slowly, his whole body shaking with the effort not to just rut into her with all his might, until the cock ring snapped in half (as if that would ever happen). “Oh, god, Armin…” It was his first time doing this without a condom; he couldn’t really compare the two, as he was hypersensitive from the cock ring, but the thought that he was pressed into Armin skin-to-skin was just as overwhelming as everything else. He felt Levi’s cock rub at his hole, up and down between his cheeks. “Levi…” Eren called. 

“Yes, Eren?” Levi asked, trying to sound calm. He did not at all sound calm, his voice breathy and quick, stumbling over syllables. 

“Do you want me to beg now?” 

Levi pushed into Eren with a low groan. “You’ll beg me to come,” he said. “Just wait -- I know you.” 

“Oh, fuuuuck…” Eren made a noise that sounded like a sob when Levi’s hips hit his ass, his cock buried deep inside. He pulled out of Armin, chasing Levi’s pressure; Armin gasped and her hands came down from the headboard to grip at her spread thighs, nails digging into the skin. She didn’t even feel any pain from it, only the pleasure of being extremely well-filled. 

Eren was having a hard time adjusting. Not to Levi’s size; Levi had prepared him well, and patiently, if more quickly than Eren had expected. He was adjusting to a level of sensation that he hadn’t previously even imagined, much less considered possible, and he was enduring it for this long when he’d never lasted longer than a few minutes with so much focus on him. Here, sandwiched between Armin and Levi, he would’ve come in seconds, probably, without the cock ring. 

Levi hadn’t set an alarm this time, so Eren assumed, correctly, that how long he’d be subjected to this restraint depended on how fast Levi reduced him to begging, and how well he begged to be allowed to come. Eren didn’t have a lot of personal experience with things he would consider kinky, but this probably ranked somewhere around -- _oh_ , oh, that was definitely his prostate and his brain was definitely just put through a very sudden liquefying process. He wasn’t sure which moans belonged to who, didn’t particularly notice or care which words were falling from his mouth. 

Apparently he must have, at some point, begged to come, because Levi was dragging him back by the hips and tugging the cock ring off for the last time, holding his cock in a vice grip before guiding it back into Armin. Eren came on the next thrust, emptying himself into Armin, squeezing Levi so tight he couldn’t move. Levi came into the condom moments later, and pulled out as soon as Eren relaxed. 

They tried to catch their breath, but Armin was still whining, still rubbing up against Eren, who winced and shifted his hips back, slipping out of her. “Sorry, I-I can’t. Sorry.” He rolled onto his right side and reached for Armin’s hand, guiding it down between her legs. 

Levi got the tied-off condom into the trash, then pulled Eren and Armin’s hands out of the way. “Turn over,” he told Armin, and he hauled her up onto her knees, burying his fingers in her immediately. 

Eren’s release, thick and sticky, pushed out around his fingers; Armin felt it dripping down her thighs and moaned as Levi thrust his fingers into her with a speed he didn’t know he could possess this soon after his own climax. He laid one arm across Armin’s lower back, pushing down to keep her in place while he plunged two fingers deep, over and over, until Armin was screaming, then completely silent, her whole body going tense. 

Levi slowed his thrusting fingers until Armin started breathing again, and started to pull them out, but she reached back and dug her fingers into whatever part of him she could reach -- his thigh, apparently. 

“ _Don’t stop_ ,” she gasped out. Armin’s body wasn’t used to the feeling, and it wasn’t as strong or overwhelming as it could be, but she could tell it was different this time, especially when she looked between her legs and saw her cock still hard, still leaking with a line of cum connecting the tip to the blanket, but not the thick stripes of fluid she was used to seeing when she came in this position. _This_ was what Levi had promised her before, and when she felt Levi’s fingers press down against her prostate, she cried out his name. “Levi!” 

Levi, for his part, couldn’t believe it; it had taken him _months_ of cock rings and very well-aimed vibrator practice to wring out his first prostate orgasm, and he’d still never managed to do it at all after ejaculating first. He was impressed, but more than that, he had plans already forming. But Levi pulled himself in to stay in the moment. Armin was face down in the pillow, muffled but still breathing so he let her be as she moaned into the cotton, and her whole body twitched, trying to move despite his hold on her back. Eren was brushing back her hair, barely able to see her face but still staring at her in amazement. He had tear-tracks drying on his cheeks, and Levi felt a thrill that he’d been partially responsible for fucking Eren so well he cried. 

Armin wasn’t far off, her eyes shut tight and leaking onto the pillow. She took heaving inhales and sobbing exhales, her hand on Levi’s thigh still spurring him on, until she couldn’t take it anymore and reached between her legs to finish herself off. 

Armin sprawled her legs out on the bed, completely worn out, barely noticing the wet spot beneath her thighs, and turned to Eren, who was still stroking her hair. “I’m not moving for a week,” Armin said, tired, slightly hoarse. 

“Same,” Eren said, sounding just as wrecked. 

Levi faceplanted into the pillow on the empty side of the bed, groaning. “That was so fucking much,” he said, and his lovers said “Uh-huh,” at the same time. 

“Do you think most college students get to have sex this good?” Eren mused. His eyelids were drooping, and honestly, they would all be asleep in minutes. 

“I don’t think most _porn stars_ have sex that good,” Levi said. He also had a warm feeling in his chest that despite his fuckup and the awkwardness and discomfort he and Armin had to endure before it, that it went so overwhelmingly well. 

Armin started to ask something about cleanup, but Levi groaned again and said, surprising everyone including himself, that it could fucking wait. 

“How many times did you come, anyway?” Levi asked. 

“Dunno,” Armin said. “Seemed like it just didn’t stop.” 

“Ah. That sometimes happens.” That was the last thing any of them heard before they fell asleep. 


	58. The Dog Park

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A family trip to the dog park. Later, there is sex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it’s been 4 months because i moved back to massachusetts and got a new job. also i’m going to katsucon in february!
> 
> i went back and removed many of the author notes in previous chapters. remaining notes have also been revised to more accurately represent sensitive content. 
> 
> chapter warnings: sexual content. spanking (barely). mention of past animal abuse in context of recovery.

Levi did not have a dog. 

Eren did not have a dog. 

Armin had once had a dog, when she was very young, but no longer. 

Farlan and Isabel had talked about getting a dog, but decided against it for the time being. 

Nevertheless, as non-dog-owners but very much so dog-people, the five of them all took a walk to the nearby dog park on Saturday afternoon. Thankfully, dog parks were wonderful, amazing spaces where dog enthusiasts could come with the intention to pet dogs, and dog owners would generally let them do so, because it was playtime and what kind of asshole doesn’t let people pet their dog during playtime? A dog hater, that’s who. And dog haters should not have dogs to bring to the dog park in the first place. Obviously. 

Eren’s roll out of bed this morning at the usual hour of eight-fifteen was more hellish than usual, nursing a sore ass and forcing himself to leave the very comfortable embrace of his sleepy and beautiful loves, but this trip began to make up for it, because dogs just had a way of making things better. The weather was beautiful, the dogs were excited, Eren immediately ditched the group when an enormous dark gray mutt with an incredibly droopy face stole his heart no less than two minutes into the excursion. 

Armin and Levi watched him follow the dog back to its owner, then have a short conversation with her. With her permission, Eren held his hands out for the dog to drop its slobbery ball into, and he started playing catch with the excited fur-baby. Upon its return, the huge dog tackled its new friend to the ground, and Eren laughed loudly as the dog dropped its ball and thoroughly licked his face. 

“Aww, Eren made a friend,” Levi teased, though anyone could tell how fondly he watched the scene. 

The group came closer to where Eren was slowly sitting up and carefully but firmly pushing the dog back. Its owner, a few feet away, was laughing heartily, apparently used to this behavior. “I warned him!” she shouted. 

“Her name’s Titan,” Eren cooed. He scratched behind her ears with both hands. “She’s such a good dog. Isn’t that right, Titan?” 

Titan boofed in agreement. Eren’s hands left her face to search for the ball, and she shook her head, floppy ears and droopy lips flapping wildly. After a moment of awkwardly jumping around, she chased after the ball that Eren threw past her. 

Eren scrambled off the ground before Titan returned, planting his feet firmly so he wouldn’t be knocked over again. But when Titan did come back, she made a small circle in front of Eren, plopped down on her butt, and cocked her head to the side. She then got up, and dropped the ball at Armin’s feet, before sitting back down again and panting, looking up expectantly at Armin. 

“It’s ‘cause you smell like Eren,” Farlan said, his shoulders shaking in quiet laughter. Isabel laughed louder. 

Armin blushed, but she picked up Titan’s slightly sticky ball anyway and gave it a throw. 

This went on for a while, Armin and Eren switching off their tosses and getting their hands and faces thoroughly covered in dog slobber. Alma, Titan’s owner, conversed with the two of them, while Levi and his siblings found themselves whisked away by other dogs more their style. 

Levi got caught up in a severe-looking Doberman that had apparently challenged him to a staring contest before coming close and nosing at his hand, elegantly asking for petting. He ended up sitting on a nearby bench, trying very hard to appear as if he wasn’t cuddling this massive dog while its owner told him about how she’d picked him up from a rescue facility, how she’d found out the dog had been trained to attack anything that moved and had been injured several times, how she’d carefully rehabilitated the dog to accept love once more, even if it took a few minutes of staring first. Levi’s heart went out to the dog, feeling an odd sort of kinship in that they’d both been trained to fight and then slowly learned to love. 

Isabel dragged Farlan over to a pair of tiny service dogs in training that a mother and son were taking jackets off of, allowing them to roam free for a while before they went back to work. A brother and sister, barely a year old and on track to be trained in seizure detection. They were the calmest pair of dogs Isabel had ever seen, and they sniffed her up and down, and Farlan too, before allowing themselves to be held. 

Wet noses poked at their faces and soft fur ran through their hands as the puppies explored their perches without wriggling from their secure holds. Isabel giggled, nosing back at the puppy in her arms, while Farlan let out a loud, content sigh and nuzzled his whole face into the dog’s soft, warm belly. 

In that moment they all knew that dog parks -- not love or sex or office supply shopping -- were the closest thing Earth had to Heaven, and dogs the closest things to angels. 

When Eren’s stomach growled, he reluctantly pulled away from Titan’s slimy kisses to round up the group, as they had halfway-discussed lunch plans. He helped Armin up as well and they both gave Titan a few more pettings to say goodbye. 

They found Isabel and Farlan watching the puppies they’d played with standing proudly as they accepted their jackets back from their trainers, shaking out their floppy ears after they were buckled in securely. 

Levi was a bit harder to find, but after about twenty minutes of searching they found him nearly hidden by the doberman, named Serenity, which had fallen asleep entirely on top of Levi. Levi himself lay on his back on a blanket and stroked the dog’s head and neck while conversing in low tones with his owner. 

“Wow, you really made a friend!” Armin whispered, squatting down next to Levi. “You’re even laying down on the ground for him, how sweet.”

“He’s a beautiful, good boy and deserves the highest quality muscle bed,” Levi said, completely serious. 

The dog snuffled and picked his head up, scenting the air. 

“Aw,” Levi said, but he let Serenity get off of him to inspect his partners and siblings. He sat up with his legs loosely crossed; the dog seemed more wary of the new people than he had been of Levi, and Levi experienced a certain surge of pride that Serenity had recognised him as a kindred soul. 

Is there any better feeling than bonding with an animal? No. There isn’t. Dogs are so good. 

\---

“I’d fuck this pizza,” Levi said, fully serious. 

Eren laughed into his drink, while Armin tried not to stare at the pizza chef, who was definitely watching Levi very, very carefully. 

“Levi,” Farlan warned. 

“What? Would you _not_ fuck this pizza? Are you telling me you would not sink your dick into a healthy slice of this glorious pie?” There was a faint flush on Levi’s face, which was the worst part, because it suggested he might actually be serious. 

Isabel started smacking Farlan’s shoulder, which Levi could only assume meant he had stopped translating for her out of embarrassment. So Levi turned towards her and enunciated clearly, making sure his lips were easy to read: “I said I would make sweet, sweet, kinky gay love to this sixteen-inch.” 

Isabel’s face screwed up and she slumped over the table, shaking with laughter. 

“ _Levi_ ,” Farlan warned again. “You’re going to get us kicked out.”

“It’s a _metaphor_ , Farlan. The pizza is really fucking good. My compliments to the chef. It’s not even greasy, though I suppose that would make it easier--”

“Please, God, stop!” Armin cried out, laughing into the hands covering her face. 

The group of five sat in a pizzeria one town over from the college, to which they’d gotten by bus. It came highly recommended and it was easy to see why; their pizza was _seriously fucking good_. What was it about Massachusetts pizza places that they just so happened to have a whole bunch of really weird-as-hell slices available every day that all tasted perfectly unified in cheesy, bready goodness? Even the non-cheesy vegan pizzas were delicious. But the one’s here were just especially good, somehow. 

Hence, Levi’s loudly stated desire to fornicate with one of the pizzas. 

He began to dig into a chicken-bacon-ranch pizza, rather standard and popular for the college towns, but somehow the non-greasiness improved upon the house ranch dressing and lightly breaded chicken bits, and allowed the bacon’s natural flavor to come out on top, delicious in its own right rather than swimming in its own oily residues. 

The other pizza at the table was a more creative one; a vegan pizza with a topping described as “mac ‘n’ nooch”, which the server had described as being made of fresh homemade pasta from the fancy Italian non-pizzeria restaurant three doors down, with baked and mashed butternut squash, and nutritional yeast. The first bite tasted confusingly not at all like mac ‘n’ cheese, despite that the stuff was an almost glowing neon yellow-orange as Kraft dinner would be, but the second bit was almost as close to heaven as the dog park. This was the one that Levi wanted to fuck, and honestly, it wasn’t that surprising. Mac ‘n’ nooch is the stuff of gods. However, Eren had the last remaining piece; there was none left to fuck. 

“I need to learn how to make this,” Eren whispered to his pizza, admiring its smooth texture, its creamy butternut cheese-substitute. “Show me your secrets.”

“Jealous?” Levi asked. “Want me to eat mac ‘n’ nooch off your dick?”

“I… maybe.” 

“Please!” the chef called over the counter, his accent thick on his tongue. “This is a family restaurant.”

“Yeah, and this is my family-” Levi started, before Armin clapped her hands over his mouth. 

“He’ll stop. Sorry, sir.”

“Thank you.” 

Levi ended up ordering another mac ‘n’ nooch pizza to take home, causing the chef to lean over his dough and murmur what was probably a few Hail Marys, and Eren resolved to figure out what in the godly fuck the secret was. Armin simply googled “mac ‘n’ cheese nutritional yeast” on Eren’s phone and left the recipe open for him to find later. She too had enjoyed the new flavors. 

On the bus back to Farlan and Isabel’s hotel, Levi asked questions of his siblings that he probably thought were way more subtle than they actually were. 

“Where are you living now?” he asked, trying to sound casual. “How do you get to work? Is it too far? Would you like to be closer? Where do you work? What sorts of things are important to you in an apartment?”

“Levi,” Farlan interrupted partway through _are you considering getting any pets in the near future?_ “Are you seriously trying to get us an apartment?” 

“Yes,” Levi admitted. “I already had a few in mind. I want to make sure they’ll fit your living style, though.” 

Farlan sighed, and Isabel shook her head. “Why?”

“Because you’re my family, and we always swore we would take care of each other.” 

“We can’t repay you --”

“I don’t want you to. Just keep in contact, that’s repayment enough. More than enough.” Levi’s expression never changed, but his eyes sparkled, alive and just a little wet. 

Farlan sighed again. “Not too big. No penthouses.”

“I’m not _that_ loaded.” 

“Seriously. Your apartment is already getting on the big side for us. The hotel suite you got us is enormous. We like cozy spaces, and we don’t have a lot of stuff. As for pets… A dog would be nice if we can get one.” 

“Do you have a preference for breed?”

“...We can get our own _dog_ at least. Since I know you won’t let us pay a damn cent in rent.” 

“You got that right,” Levi confirmed, gruff though it was easy to hear the emotion thick in his throat. 

Farlan went quiet for a few moments, his fingers and Isabel’s tapping their words back and forth. After a while, Isabel nudged him with her elbow, and he conceded. “I’d like to not have to take the subway to work anymore. It’ll free me up for more nights to work if I’m close, ‘cause Izzy won’t have to take me.” 

“That’s getting you more into the heart of the city. You sure you want that?” 

Farlan nodded. “I know it’ll get more expensive --”

Levi snorted. “I told you I can’t afford penthouses, but I can definitely get you into Manhattan.” 

Farlan looked relieved, and Izzy proud. “Thank you, Levi. This means so much to us, I can’t even begin to explain…”

“Don’t. I know what it means to you, okay? I had my own help to get where I am. There’s no shame in accepting mine, and I get it. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t know how much it means, how it’ll change your lives.” Levi stretched his legs out and slouched in his bus seat. “Okay, last question. How many bedrooms do you need?”

Farlan sank into his seat, while Isabel laughed loudly. “We’re not like that!” Farlan insisted. 

“I know you’re not fucking, Jesus. But I got you two beds at the hotel and you’re only using one. I figured you like to cuddle.” 

“We’re… used to it? One-bedrooms are cheaper,” Farlan explained. 

“I get it. So do you want to stick with one, or upgrade?” 

Isabel looked at Farlan and squeezed his hand. 

“We’ll talk about it,” Farlan said. 

“Talk soon. I can have you in a new place as soon as next weekend.”

“But, uh, our lease --”

“I’ll pay the fee for breaking it. Don’t worry about it.” 

“Levi, this is too much.”

Levi waved them off. “Getting you a fancy-ass Manhattan apartment is fine, but breaking your lease is too much? Fuck that. I’m here for you.” 

A moment passed in silence, and that silence broke on a sob. 

Isabel launched herself across the space between their seats and threw herself on Levi, her arms closing around him in a vice grip. 

“Izzy!” Levi exclaimed, but his hands came down to rest on her back, soothing with his touch even as his eyes widened in alarm. 

“Thank you, Levi,” Farlan said. His voice shook, and his own river of tears slipped down his cheeks. 

“Just… name your dog after me,” Levi grumbled. The sudden affection made him feel awkward, though he welcomed it. 

“I swear, we will.” Farlan got to his feet and unsteadily, with the rocking of the bus, stepped toward his siblings; Levi held out a hand to lead him to the empty space beside him and Farlan joined the hug. “This means so much to us.”

“I know. Trust me, I know.” Levi brushed the tears from Isabel’s cheeks, and held her head close, not minding for once that saltwater soaked into his shirt. 

“You’re a good man, Levi. I knew you would be, but you never believed me.” Farlan’s head found Levi’s, and he rested there, his arms tightening around the two. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks, _Dad_ ,” Levi said, pushing enough vinegar sarcasm into it that Farlan could imagine the eyeroll. 

The stop for the hotel came, and Levi walked his siblings up to their room. They said good-night, still tearful (even Levi’s eves were a little watery), and after reminding Farlan and Isabel that he would pick them up at noon the next day to take them to the train, Levi headed home. 

The sun was just touching what little of the horizon Levi could see between the trees, buildings, and more distant mountains; by the time he let himself into his building, the sky had turned to oranges and pinks. Armin and Eren were waiting for him in the bedroom, cuddled up together and watching something on Eren’s phone. 

More specifically, Eren was watching with wide eyes and darkened cheeks, a tent in his pants, and Armin was watching half behind her hands. Tinny moans and salacious words came from the phone’s internal speakers. 

“Are you two watching fucking porn without me?” Levi asked. 

“Armin mentioned this,” Eren mumbled. “She says you did it to her.” 

“You want a demonstration?” Levi asked, pretty well able to guess what they were watching. 

Eren locked his phone and sat up almost as fast as his dick. 

Armin rolled onto her back and spread her legs apart when Levi got onto the bed, allowing him to crawl up between her legs and slip his hands under her dress. 

He pulled down her underwear, light blue and white striped cotton boyshorts he’d left in with her laundry on purpose because they were adorable and totally her color, and dropped it right on top of Eren’s clothed dick. Levi pushed up Armin’s dress to her hips, and watched her face, watched Armin cover her bitten, smiling lips in excitement and anticipation. 

Levi left a kiss on the tip of her cock, still mostly soft against her thigh, and watched it go ruddy and hard with just the puffs of his breath tickling her crotch. His index and middle fingers pushed her balls aside, searching for the little indent he’d found before. 

“Good?” Levi asked. 

Armin nodded. “Yeah. Mm.” 

Levi pushed in with his little finger like the last time, slowly, allowing Armin to adjust to the mostly-new sensation. Armin moaned, quietly but not shy. 

“You like that?” Eren asked.

“Mm.” Armin reached for Eren’s hand and threaded their fingers together, trying not to tense up while Levi wiggled his finger, pushing in deeper to see how far he could push into Armin before this surprising little tunnel ended, or the skin allowed no more stretch. 

“It really feels good?” Eren whispered, stunned. 

Armin nodded. “It’s like -- _ah_ \-- I don’t think I could get off to it, but it’s nice. Well, maybe, I don’t know. This is only the second time.” 

“Can I try it?” Eren asked, his hand sliding over Armin’s thigh like he just had to touch. 

“Uh.” Armin looked down at Levi; their eyes met, and he seemed surprised at her hesitation. Hadn’t Armin said she wanted Eren to learn this? But for some reason, now Armin was having second thoughts. “Maybe another time. Just hold me for now.” 

“Okay.” Eren’s arms went around Armin’s waist, and he watched Levi drop fluttering kisses up and down Armin’s cock as his little finger still pushed and pulled inside her. 

“Can you finger me?” Armin asked. “Like, you know, in my ass?”

Levi nodded. “Not feeling this right now?”

“I like it, I do! I just, it’s still really new.”

“Afraid?”

Armin pinked. “Maybe,” she mumbled. “A little bit, I think. I want it, and I like it, but I don’t want it for too long.” 

Levi withdrew his little finger from where it was tucked away behind Armin’s balls and he reached over for the bottle of lube and the box of disposable gloves that sat on his nightstand. He slicked up his fingers and rubbed them together to warm it up; he left a kiss on Armin’s neck and she shivered, her legs splaying open wider for him, her dress bunching at her hips. 

With the first press of two thin fingers at her hole, Armin’s hips twitched. Levi rubbed around the opening, applying gentle pressure; his bitten-down fingernails didn’t leave any impression through the gloves, but the longer ones on his ring and pinky fingers that escaped most of Levi’s nervous biting habit ran up and down the warm cleft of her ass, scratching just enough to tickle pleasantly and make Armin moan. 

“You want me? You want my fingers inside you?” Levi asked, both teasing and checking in. Armin nodded and rocked her hips, relaxing her muscles enough for the tip of Levi’s middle finger to enter her. 

“Mmh, yes,” Armin breathed out. She moaned when Levi pushed in with intention, his finger rocking up into her prostate with incredible accuracy. “Fu-u-uck,” she groaned, and felt her joints turn to jello for as much as she was able to control them at that moment. 

Eren flopped on his stomach, his shoulder flush against Armin's. "You're beautiful," he whispered to her, his hand sliding down beneath him to rub at his cock through his jeans. 

Armin had nothing to say to that, as her head was full of static. Levi pushed a second finger into her, the pads of his fingers playing her like an instrument, touching her deep and with careful precision, taking her apart with every second of his experience behind each curl of his fingers. 

"You're so sexy," Levi murmured. He groaned at the same time Armin did; his cock pressed hard against the inside of his zipper, almost painful. He pressed down on it with the heel of his hand, going against years of experience telling him it wouldn't relieve any of his arousal, and would only make things worse. 

Armin reached out, fingers catching on Levi's shirt near the shoulder, to pull him down into a kiss. She nearly screamed as soon as their lips met; she'd been holding back, but with Levi's mouth to muffle her she let it out, to hell with the downstairs neighbors and their rude letters. Armin whimpered and moaned, Levi's kisses barely catching the noise; her hips rocked, uncontrollable, after Levi pushed a third finger in, oh-so-slowly and with careful kisses down the side of her neck as she went quiet, only harsh breaths slipping from her lips. Armin clenched hard around Levi, and he worried his fingers might snap in half for a moment before she relaxed and went limp. 

Levi started to withdraw his fingers, very slowly because he knew what was coming. 

Armin's hand shot out and gripped his wrist. "More."

"Turn over," Levi said, and she did immediately, tucking her knees spread wide beneath her to hold her ass in the air. 

At Armin's side, Eren whined loudly, still having not pulled his cock free from the confines of his jeans. He was on his side, gripping the bulge of his cock tight, trying not to come until at least something was happening. 

Levi considered teasing him, but he didn't want to tease Armin, so he pushed his fingers back into her, silently marvelling at how easy it had been to get her to a prostate orgasm and to wanting another. 

“Tell me what you want. Let me know how much you want it,” Levi said, the words tumbling from his lips, sweet as honey, and Armin whined. She shifted her hips back, whining, trying to force that perfect touch but Levi kept his fingers terribly shallow. 

“I’m not doing any more until you tell me what you want.”

Armin refused, breathing out simply “ _Anything!_ ” 

Levi pulled his fingers out. Eren groaned, disappointed, at the same time that Armin did. Okay, maybe he wanted to tease her a little bit. 

“Tell me,” Levi requested. 

“Fuck me with your fingers,” Armin gritted through her teeth, and turned her face fully into the pillow when Levi complied, shoving into her. Her whine was high-pitched and throaty, wet and earnest. The bed rocked with her hips; Levi threw an arm over her back to hold her in place and fucked his fingers in deeper. 

The bed still rocked, now because of Eren turned back on his stomach and more or less humping the bed as he watched the scene before him: Armin pushing sweat-soaked hair from her face and turning to stare hazily at Eren while Levi worked her over the edge a second time. 

Armin was silent, shaking, tremors wracking her whole body, shivers down her spine; Eren let out a low, harsh “ _Fuck!_ ” and stilled his rocking, his eyes locked on hers. Eren reached out for Armin’s hand, twisted in the sheets, and covered it, smiling with what energy he could. 

Levi withdrew his fingers and stripped the glove from his hand to throw it in the trash. Immediately he opened up his fly and pushed down his white jeans just enough to pull his cock out. The tip was an angry purple-red with how hard he was and how long he’d held back; Levi held it in a tight grip and stroked at a punishing pace. 

Armin turned over on her back, her dress flaring out around her. “Come on me,” Armin said, still breathing heavy. 

“Huh?” Levi slowed his strokes, squinting at her through his sweaty lashes. 

Armin started to undo the line of plastic buttons on the front of her dress. “Yeah, do it. Come on me. Come on my, uh.” Her cheeks colored, like she was saying something terribly embarrassing, but she smiled up at him. “Come on my tits.” 

Levi made a strangled noise as he gripped the base of his shaft with one hand and pushed Armin down by the shoulder with the other. Her back hit the soft bed, an “Oof!” pushed from her lungs, but still she grinned up at him, undoing the buttons down to her hips and holding the material open for him while he held her down. 

Levi’s strokes turned to a furious pace, his eyes slipping shut, but he forced them open as he released the sticky spurts of his come all over Armin’s chest and neck, and a bit even on the side of her chin and cheek. 

Armin moaned aloud, her own come mixing with Levi’s on her chest, and in frankly unbelievable amounts. He hadn’t seen her touching herself, her cock pulled out just above the last two closed buttons at the bottom of her dress. But now he felt an odd wash of emotion come over him, pushing him to lean down and swipe the flat of his tongue over the ripple of her upper ribs, soft skin tasting slightly of sweat as he sucked up every drop on her chest, to Armin’s astonishment. He kissed each nipple and left a soft bite and a hard suck when they were clean; he left love bites up the side of her neck; he pushed his tongue into her mouth when Armin’s face was clean. 

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Levi murmured against Armin’s lips. 

“You,” Armin returned, breathless. She reached for Levi’s hand, still gripping her shoulder, and he let go only to entwine his fingers with hers, kissing each knuckle. 

Eren leaned his head in, nuzzling Armin’s shoulder. “Ugh, fuck. I came in my pants,” he remembered when movement made the sticky mess more obvious and more uncomfortable. 

“You should change before the cumstain spreads,” Levi advised breathlessly. 

Eren groaned, but he rolled onto his back. He started kicking his pants and underwear off; he balled up his underwear and wiped up the rest of the mess between his legs with it, then heaved himself out of bed to go toss it in the sink and let it soak for a little while. He crawled back into bed, shucking his shirt as well; Armin had stripped herself in the meantime as well, and Levi was hanging up his shirt before joining them to roll into an early sleep. 

\---

On Sunday morning, Levi rose before the sun and went for his morning run. He showered, then after the sun came up he went back up to the campus to take out a zipcar again for the day. 

It was much earlier than needed to take his siblings to Springfield to catch the train, but it gave him something to do while he waited for Eren and Armin to wake up. He knew they would both spend the day studying for the last few days of classes, finishing up those finals which were due the last day of class or, in Armin’s case, thoroughly outlining papers she still had over a week to write. Likely Eren would head to the studios after breakfast, and Armin to the library. Levi ended up stopping by the bagel cafe to get a dozen and a few tubs of cream cheese; two big plain ones, one small strawberry flavor, and one with capers and crushed clove that Levi thought might be really good or really awful. 

It ended up being really good, Levi found out as he spread it on a sesame bagel on the bench in front of the cafe, so he went back in and grabbed another. Because why the fuck not. 

When he got back home, after parking in one of the open spaces behind the building, Armin was only just starting to stir; she rolled towards the door as Levi came in. Armin rubbed her eyes, blinked at Levi, then held her arms out, beckoning him to the bed. 

Levi leaned over her and gave her a kiss; Armin scrunched up her nose. 

“You taste like pickles and ham.” 

“Caper-clove cream cheese.” 

“Bless you,” Armin said, chuckling at the alliteration. “Did you already have breakfast then?”

“Mhm. I brought back bagels.” 

“Mmf.” Armin stretched her body out, and Eren, shaken by the movement, snuffled behind her. “Eat with us,” Armin demanded, pouting. 

“But I just did,” Levi reminded. 

“Eat more. You’re too thin. You’re all muscles and no squishy.” 

Levi let a little affection seep into his eyes as he stroked her hair. “You’re pretty thin yourself.”

“Yeah, but I eat a lot. It’s not my fault. Eren’s nice and squishy.” 

Eren, though still asleep, apparently heard his name, because he made a noise. 

“I’ll have another bagel if you can wake him up,” Levi compromised. 

“Deal,” Armin said, still only half-awake but determined. She rolled back over, hands snaking under the blankets, and within moments Eren awoke with a bleary, “Wha-- _oh_.” 

Levi left them to it, leaving the bedroom door open so he could hear the sounds of their early-morning pleasure while he made coffee. 

A few minutes later, Eren and Armin joined him, dishevelled and underdressed. Armin was in just a clean pair of undies and a t-shirt, and Eren had the bedsheet over his shoulders; Levi assumed correctly that there was nothing underneath. 

“I’m out of underwear,” Eren announced to the inside of the bagel bag. 

“Do you want to borrow mine again?” Levi asked. 

“Um. Maybe if you have normal ones my size?”

“Not silk?” Levi teased, remembering the last time Eren had borrowed his underwear. 

Eren, who had been surfacing from the large paper bag full of delicious bagel smell, cinnamon raisin in hand, immediately took another very deep-diving whiff in order to hide his face. “No thank you!” 

“They’re so comfortable, though…” Levi wiggled his butt, mostly for Armin’s amusement as Eren was still conversing with the bagels. 

“Are you wearing them now?” Armin asked. 

Levi reached into the side of his jeans, pulling up the side of his shirt with a thumb hooked in the thin side strap of a bright red g-string. “Sometimes, I like to live dangerously.”

Eren left the bagel bag to look at Levi curiously; Armin took his place, shrieking quietly to the innocent bagels who truly deserved better treatment than this. 

“Are those new pants?” Eren asked, his head cocked to the side. 

Levi looked down at his jeans. “I don’t think so. They’re clean, and I threw them in the dryer to tighten them up a little.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“They look good on you,” Eren mumbled. 

“ _Oh_?” Levi finished pouring his coffee and put the pot back. He started to cross the room while Eren stammered. “Do they make my ass look good?”

Eren backed up into the counter. He wondered, not for the first time, how Levi could sound so flirty and sensual without dropping the hardened mask of his expressionless face. Thinking on this, Eren lost his grip on the bedsheet and it slid off his shoulders, opening like curtains in front and draping over his hands, exposing him. 

Armin was spreading strawberry cream cheese on a whole grain bagel, but she paused in her motions to watch the bad-porno-worthy scene unfold in front of her. 

Levi turned around in front of Eren, facing the table, and leaned over it pointlessly to stare into the bagel bag, pushing out his ass as he did so. The well-fitted jeans pulled tight over his ass; the back of the hipline left a gap between pants and shirt that Eren wanted to slide his hands down into, but it disappeared before his eyes; Levi straightened up, another sesame bagel in his hand. He brought it up to his mouth and licked the side, slowly, sensually (Armin had her hand clamped over her face to hold back laughter at this point) then swirled his tongue around the hole in the middle. 

For some inexplicable reason, Eren had a half-chub, despite the blowjob Armin had just given him and the distinct non-sexiness of this display to probably anyone else. Levi noticed, and asked, “Really?” 

“ _You’re hot!_ ” Eren whined. “Don’t blame me for getting turned on when you’re giving me a show.” 

“You call that a show?” Levi asked. He dropped his bagel on a plate and his hands went to his fly. “This is a fucking show,” he said, tugging his pants down his hips. He bent over the table again, leaning on it, and brought a hand down with a loud _smack_ on his right ass cheek. 

Eren screamed without opening his mouth, sliding down a little on the side of the counter. 

“Come on, Eren. Smack my ass at the breakfast table.” 

“Uh, what?” 

“You heard me.” 

“Really?” 

Levi rolled his eyes. “Yes, Eren, really. I wouldn’t ask you to do that if I didn’t mean it.”

“Oh. Okay.” Eren stepped forward, reaching with both hands towards the ass offered to him. “Um. How do I…?”

Levi reached back and drew a line with one finger across the widest part of his ass. “Aim below here. Hard as you want, I can take it. Try not to hit my balls, but if you do, well, wouldn’t be the first time. I know they’re very present.” 

After a bit of stuttering, Eren placed his right hand over the small ov Levi’s back, pressing into the warmth of his skin through the shirt. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Eren gave him a light tap on the underside of his butt. 

Levi glared back at him. “Was that supposed to hurt?” 

“Well, no. I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“What if I want you to hurt me?” 

“Um.” Eren glanced at the microwave clock, for a distraction. “Uhhh you gotta leave! Wow! Train’s in two hours, better make sure you’re not late!” Eren yanked up Levi’s pants, with a surprised yelp from Levi; he then snatched up his bagel and a tub of plain cream cheese and sprinted off into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He left the bedsheet behind on the floor. 

“Don’t fuck the bagel!” Armin called after him. 

Levi groaned into the table; his open pants still exposed half his ass. 

“Don’t worry,” Armin said, patting his fuzzy head. “I think he wants to, he just needs some time to warm up to it.” 

“He’s fine with biting me purple, why’s this different?” Levi grumbled. He pulled up and fastened his pants, then sat down to eat a second bagel. 

“Love bites don’t seem as aggressive, I suppose.” 

Before Levi headed out, he knocked on the bathroom door. He heard a quiet startled noise from inside. 

“Hey, Eren, I’m leaving. I’ll see you later. You don’t have to spank me if you don’t want to.”

A whine. 

“I love you,” Levi murmured, then he left after a kiss atop Armin’s head. 

Eren emerged a few minutes later, once he was sure Levi was gone. Armin noticed his little problem had gone away; she couldn’t be certain if Eren had dealt with it, or it had gone down on its own. He was also shivering, and Armin picked up the fallen sheet and offered it to him. 

Eren wrapped himself up and sat at the table across from Armin. He returned his pilfered cream cheese and picked out a second bagel, ripping pieces off and scooping out cream cheese with the crust. 

“You okay?” Armin asked. 

Eren nodded quickly. 

“You turned on?”

Eren nodded again.

Armin laughed. “Why didn’t you do it?”

“Too much,” Eren managed, but did not elaborate, so Armin wasn’t sure whether he meant it was further than he was willing to go, or just overwhelming but definitely desirable. He wrapped the sheet tighter around himself, shivering slightly. 

“Get dressed,” Armin suggested. 

Eren shook his head and continued stuffing pieces of cream cheese covered bagel in his mouth. 

“You’re such a child sometimes,” Armin said, with humor. 

“Not a child. More like a puppy.”

“Well, that too.” Armin reached across the table and ruffled Eren’s hair; he smiled contentedly. “My puppy boyfriend. You’re definitely cuter than a puppy though.”

“Woof!”

“ _Eren_.” 

\---

Levi walked his siblings all the way to the train platform and waited with them. There was some sort of track work a little ways north, so the train was running a bit late; he made himself comfortable next to Isabel, Farlan on her other side. 

Levi touched Isabel’s hand; she turned to look at him. “It was great to see the two of you again,” he said, and watched the smiles spread on their faces. 

Isabel tapped his cheek with her right hand, taking the left out of Farlan’s grip to sign something at Levi. He recognized about half of it -- _don’t, fifteen, see, again_.

“Don’t make you wait fifteen years before I see you again?” Levi guessed. 

Isabel nodded. 

“I know I’ll see you sooner than that. After all, I know where you live now.”

Isabel laughed; Farlan shook his head, smiling. 

“Should we start packing as soon as we get back?” Farlan asked. 

“Yes. I’ll have the rental realtor contact you about visiting the apartments this week.”

“And Izzy gave you our landlord’s number, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll call him first thing when I’m back home.” 

Isabel signed again. 

“ _Take care of your_ …” Levi interpreted. “My what? Oh, you mean, Eren and Armin?”

Isabel smiled, her nose scrunching up with it, eyes crinkling at the edges. She nodded, rolling her eyes, then jabbed a finger into his chest. 

“You meant, ‘take care of myself’?”

Isabel nodded again. 

“But you like my guess.” 

A third nod. She leaned in and embraced him, thin but strong arms curling tight around Levi’s shoulders. Isabel backed off then and held Levi at arm’s length, just looking at him for a moment. 

“Do I look different after all these years?” Levi asked. 

Isabel shook her head, then seemed to rethink this answer. She reached up and lifted his hat slightly before dropping it back down on top of the growing fuzz on top of his head. 

“Yeah… There was an incident. I miss my hair. I’m growing it back.”

Isabel curled the fingers of her right hand in and moved her clawed fingers in a circle around her cheek. 

Levi squinted, but the sign wasn’t familiar to him. “I don’t know that one, sorry.” 

Isabel pouted. _Practice_ , she signed, and Levi knew that one at least. She reached for Farlan’s hand again. 

“She says you look like a peach.”

Levi scowled. “I do not.” 

Isabel gave him a disbelieving look. 

Just then, the platform speakers crackled to life; the announcement was completely indecipherable, but Levi looked to the arrivals board and saw the Northeast Regional train his siblings were taking was coming in. 

“This is it,” Farlan said, having managed to pick out enough from the garbled announcement that he understood it. “We’ll see you soon, yeah?”

“Definitely. I’ll probably be down this summer sometime, if you’ll have me.”

“Levi, we’ll essentially be living in _your_ apartment. You’re welcome whenever you want.” 

The train pulled in and the trio stood from their bench, exchanging hugs and goodbyes, see-you-soons. Levi watched his siblings board the train together, hands in his pockets, tears in his eyes. The last time he said goodbye to them was half his life ago, and it hurt to see Isabel and Farlan’s train pull away. 

It wouldn’t be like that ever again. Levi had already made certain of it. If only his twisty turny stomach and his damned burning tear ducts knew that. 

He drove back with the radio on, humming along to a poignantly relevant song he’d heard over and over recently, about being strapped for cash and still finding enjoyment in life on counted pennies. For someone who remembered picking up dropped change on cracks and curbs while walking through the boroughs to whichever fight he’d heard whispers of that would let a teenager throw punches, the idea of having enough spare dollars to make it to a party was once no more than a dream. Now, the parties were thrown in his honor, and if Levi insulted some snooty millionaire it was because he remembered a time when he wasn’t one of them. 

He hit bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-90 and, while completely stopped in his tiny lime green rental car, he did his weekly swipe through gofundme on his phone. Isabel’s text message updates on their location came through every so often, the notifications at the top of his screen reminding him, as if he would ever forget, why he did this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song playing on the radio is royals by lorde.

**Author's Note:**

> you can follow @[nq_what](https://twitter.com/nq_what) on twitter for writing updates, including orange and a few other works, and possibly updates on my art and cosplays; @[askorangefic](http://askorangefic.tumblr.com/) on tumblr for asking questions about this fic or maybe interacting with the characters?; @[nouveauqueer](http://nouveauqueer.tumblr.com/) on tumblr for my main blog. i track the tumblr tag _#fic: orange_.


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